Curious Thing

Amy Grant's "Curious Thing" spins three ordinary lives into a meditation on how unpredictable fortune can be. A down-and-out man with a weary smile and no home drifts to Los Angeles, goes nowhere for a while, then lands a movie role and becomes a millionaire. A carefree man with a degree in fun gets a doorbell surprise — a long-lost flame leaves a suitcase, a bear, and a son on his doorstep — and his days fill with school runs and car pools. A girl once mocked for greasy hair and geeky glasses resurfaces as a magazine cover face while the singer stands in the checkout line buying rice and beans. Between verses, the chorus repeats the plain confession that life is a curious thing, and the bridge admits it can be demanding and unkind, something the singer doesn't fully understand but keeps trying to. The closing lines — that tomorrow is unknowable and things are seldom what they seem — turn the song's observations into a quiet invitation to hold plans loosely. It's a storytelling song more than a doctrinal one, finding wonder in reversals rather than resolving them.