When I was Vice-President of A&R with A&M Records, I signed a wonderful singer, songwriter and producer by the name of Paul Janz. Within a short time of the release of his A&M debut album High Strung, he was nominated for and won a Juno Award as Best New Male Singer. When it came time for his follow-up album, I had flown to Vancouver from Toronto to spend several days with Paul to go over the new songs he had written and to help him narrow down the choice of songs to record. I was so knocked out with his new material and the growth his writing had taken. At this point he still did not have a manager looking after his career; in fact, I was helping him out a lot with lots of management advice though still an A&M Records employee. This was around February of 1986. By April of the same year, I had made a decision to leave A&M and to move to Vancouver to become Paul's manager.
We released his second album, Believe In Me and one of the singles, the title song, Believe In Me, became a hit in Canada and also charted Top Twenty in the United States on the Adult Contemporary Billboard chart.
I had not seen the video for Believe In Me in many years until today, when I saw it was posted to YouTube; I just had to share it with you. This video was shot in Vancouver and included some wonderful seniors from a retirement home as well as some great children: a school choir, plus some of Paul's children and my own son, David.
While this is not not a Christmas or "Seasonal" song, is a perfect time of year for this song. I sincerely hope you enjoy it and I would not be at all surprised if you were moved emotionally by the end of this beautiful song. Incidentally, Paul left the music business as a recording artist to pursue his passion, theological studies. He is now Dr. Paul Janz and with the King's College London, at University of London, England.
Enjoy!
Michael
P.S. If you are interested in seeing more video clips of Paul Janz, please leave a comment, and I will do my best to post more.
