#62 YOU ARE MY ALL IN ALL - Dennis Jernigan

I really struggled with whether or not to include this week's song, #62, You Are My All In All, in the top 100 countdown. Certainly this song is an all-time beloved classic of the church, so recognition isn't a problem. Let's face it, if you're reading this there's about a 98% chance that you've sang the song at some point in your life. The real question is does this song fall under my admittedly arbitrary definition of a 'modern worship song'?

The song was written in 1991 by Dennis Jernigan, so technically it doesn't fall into the post 1994 timeline. But unlike other songs where one could say 'this is a Tomlin song' or 'this is a Hillsong song'; You Are My All In All is more of a church song than a song that is linked to any one individual. But still using a later version does seem a little like cheating.

So, why did I decide to include the song? It definitely IS a church classic, even if it seems like more a kids church song than a worship classic. In the end, I looked up at the upper right corner right here on this page and saw that I am, in fact 'The #1 Ranked Worship Blogger in the History of the Internet', and decided that I'm probably right about this.(1)

(1) Sure, there are many of my detractors who would say that I'm only 'The #1 Ranked Worship Blogger in the History of the Internet' because I gave myself that title. But isn't that exactly something that you would expect people who are jealous because they aren't 'The #1 Ranked Worship Blogger in the History of the Internet' to say? I'm pretty sure my logic holds here. 

Hey, guess what I'm doing right now? I'm NOT being a hypocrite. Allow me to explain. You see, if you are a faithful reader, you will recall that I said that if I had to buy a CD of any one artist without hearing any of it, I'd purchase a Meredith Andrews CD. You can read about it HERE and HERE. So you can imagine my joy when I found out recently that Meredith had just come out with a new CD, entitled Deeper.

Nowadays, you young kids have it easy. If you want to know if you should buy a CD, you just go to iTunes and listen to a clip of every song to decide if you might like it. Back in the day, we didn't have iTunes. I had to read reviews of CDs (we called them cassettes back then) in CCM magazine to see if we might want to buy something.

Oh, and who remembers this: we also were able to go to the local Christian Book Store at the mall and listen to the 'cassette' with headphones on to try to determine if we wanted to buy it. Sure, I guess you could get a sense if you liked the new Amy Grant offering. Eh, who was I kidding anyway, I always knew I was going to buy the new Amy Grant. I mean, it's Amy, right?

The Good Ole' Days of CCM Magazine. Let's bring that hair back, please.

Ok, back to me NOT being a hypocrite. When I joyfully found out that Meredith Andrews had an whole new CD out, I immediately fired up my Commodore 64 and went to iTunes. I was just about to click on the first song to listen to the 1 1/2 minute clip to see if I liked it when I had an epiphany: if I'm telling all my thousands of readers that I'd buy a Meredith Andrews CD without hearing it, I'd be a hypocrite if I listened to the clips first.

So, instead of listening to clips first, I decided to just click on 'Buy Now' and buy the entire CD without ever hearing it. So now, while I'm writing this, I'm listening to my newly bought Meredith Andrews CD and NOT being a hypocrite. Sure, it was scary at first, but listening so far it sounds good like I expected it to.

And now, finally, on to the song. As I mentioned, I think of You Are My All In All as more of a kid's church song, or so it seems to me. But, it is a church classic, so it deserves a spot on the list. Now, which version to use? There are hundreds out there (seemingly everyone has done the song at one time or another), and there no really 'definitive' version of the song.

In the end, I've decided to use the Jaime Jamgochian version. First of all, because it's pretty good and pretty faithful to the original. And secondly, because the luminous Miss Jaime actually tweeted about my blog when I did a review for her song, Hear My Worship. Of course to me it was a huge deal, and if you missed it and would like to read about it, I spoke extensively about my joy here: Show Me Your Glory.

So here's the video for You Are My All in All - the one where Jaime puts all her Jaime-ness all over it. Her version seems a tad more adult, a little fuller than a lot of versions I've heard. Heck, you might enjoy it more than the version you currently have.

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