[ ClassicalX ] Aled's Forty Favourite Hymns

Aled Jones is playing footsie with me under the table. Well, not intentionally but the table I have chosen is so small that every time he gets enthused (which is often) he ends up kicking me. When I joke that the resulting headline will ruin his career, he returns, No, 'Strictly' did that.

Jones' blossoming media career includes weekly spiritual show "Good Morning Sunday" on BBC Radio 2, which attracts three million listeners, and "Songs of Praise" for BBC1, which pulls in 3.5 million; he is also much in demand as a singer. His new book, Forty Favourite Hymns, will be launched at the sold-out annual "Songs of Praise" Big Sing event at the Albert Hall, plus an accompanying album and further concerts this year and into the next.

"I've been associated with hymns all my life," he explains. "I've been singing them since I was two and a half." His idea for the book came "through my time on 'Songs of Praise' we talk about hymns quite a lot, and inevitably there are weird, bizarre stories behind them. [I wanted to write about] the hymns that we've grown up with and sung all our lives, the music behind them, and the writers, [they're] quite often very anecdotal . . ."

"I love them," he continues, and throughout the interview launches enthusiastically into snippets of melody, often conducting an invisible orchestra. "The problem was I love too many of them. It's very easy getting a top 10. Once you get into the 30–40 zone, that's when it gets hard."

Celebrity ties
The title offers a countdown from 1–40, with "How Great Thou Art" ("fantastic melody, great words, really rousing") in at number one, and including modern hymns "Shine Jesus Shine" and "In Christ Alone", but mainly traditional numbers such as "Jerusalem" and "Abide with Me". Each one has a back story, researched by Jones, and his own personal recollections. There are only three hymns he has never sung before, but most of them have personal, and often celeb-packed, reminiscences behind them: he recalls singing "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" for the wedding of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates in 1986, which Geldof particularly wanted because of its "forgive our foolish ways" refrain. Jones recalls wearing orange and lime green luminous socks for the occasion, which wedding guest Simon Le Bon complimented him on; later as the dusk settled and the guests played baseball, Geldof asked him to take off one sock to wrap around the ball so they could keep playing.

His other memories include singing "How Great Thou Art" for Ann Widdecombe's 60th birthday in the House of Commons ("She chose me singing it on 'Desert Island Discs'. Someone said 'Did you hear Ann Widdecombe choose you as the thing she couldn't do without?' I mean the hymn, not me," he adds hastily), and the hymn "Be Still My Soul", which helped him through the unexpected death of his friend, rugby player Ray Gravell. He is particularly effusive about Welsh hymns, of which there are two in the book—"Sarah" (Mi Glywaf Dyner Lais) and "Calon Lân"—and recalls singing before a Welsh rugby game, and feeling the breath of thousands of people singing it back at him.

Something for everyone
Religious publishing in the UK is minimal (Christianity titles are worth just 1.1% of all non-fiction sales), compared with the massive sales in the US. "It's a bigger country to start with and there are certain bits of America where faith is really important: people still live their lives by and through faith, but it's not the same in this country. . . [I'm] not that aware of Christian publishing in this country really." Jones muses, although he is adamant that his book is for everyone. "This is definitely not a Christian-published book, it's a book about the music used in Christian worship that's for everyone really." He adds, "So many people come up to me and say they watch 'Songs of Praise', they love to sing along with the hymns. It's like the world's biggest karaoke.

"By singing them you actually feel good, even if you're not religious in the slightest." Every time he meets famous people from Melanie Sykes to John Simpson via H from Steps, he asks them to name their favourite hymn, with the list to go in the back of the book. "Yes [the book is for] the 'Songs of Praise' audience. But also people that aren't even religious will read it. Everyone has some spiritual aspect in their life even if you're not associated with a 'recognised religion' . . . Back in the old days when these hymns were being written, something happened to inspire the writer. I think it's accessible to anyone. I hope so anyway. I haven't written it 'just for the Christian'."

He adds: "I think hymns were the original great pop songs of their time. They were pieces of music that didn't even need to be written down. They could be passed from generation to generation just by singing them, by passing on the words." During his research he discovered that often "the words and the music will have been written centuries apart, it's like asking the Beatles to come up with the melody and Gary Barlow to come up with the words."

"We don't know if we'll all be singing 'Yesterday' or 'Hey Jude' in 200 years' time, but chances are we'll still be singing 'Praise My Soul the King of Heaven'."

Source: Bookseller.com