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Amy Grant
Although Amy Grant cannot claim to have invented the
Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) style of gospel music, she
did the most to popularize it in the 1970s and 1980s before
successfully crossing over to pop music in the ‘80s and early
‘90s. When Grant came along as a teenager in the mid-‘70s,
"inspirational" (i.e., White) gospel music was a tiny subgenre,
its records sold almost exclusively in Christian bookstores and
almost exclusively in small numbers. By the mid-‘80s, when she
released Unguarded, her first album to be marketed to a secular
as well as a Christian audience, gospel music constituted 8% of
U.S. record sales, a higher percentage than that for jazz or
classical music. She achieved this breakthrough for CCM and for
herself by forging a pop-rock sound that matched the production
values, and often aped the styles, of pop-rock, and by writing
lyrics that often were ambiguous in their meaning, sounding to
Christian music fans like appeals to God and to more general pop
fans like love songs. She also matched the staging of rock
concerts in her shows, which often played in venues more typical
of secular performances than religious ones. And her music
videos, which emphasized her photogenic appearance, were on a
par with those of pop stars. When it occurred, her complete
crossover to pop was more a slight shift of emphasis than a
major change of direction. Nevertheless, it made her a
controversial figure in the Christian music community of the
‘80s in a way similar to Bob Dylan in the folk music in the
1960s: she was both the field's biggest star and came to be
viewed as something of a traitor. As her career went on,
however, she managed to mend fences with traditional fans and
achieve a balance of pop and Christian-oriented songs on her
albums as her career became less of a full-time focus for her
and her record sales declined from the heights of her pop
heyday.
Born November 25, 1960, in Augusta, GA, where her father, Dr.
Burton Paine Grant, was doing his residency, Amy Lee Grant was a
descendent of one of the most prominent and prosperous families
of Nashville, TN. Her great-grandfather, Andrew Mizell Burton,
was a wealthy insurance executive and philanthropist. She was
the fourth and final daughter born to her father and her mother,
Gloria Grant, following her sisters Mimi, Kathy, and Carol. The
family moved briefly to Houston, TX, in 1961 before returning to
settle in Nashville. In addition to being well established
socially and financially, the Grant family was also deeply
religious, belonging to the strict Protestant sect the Church of
Christ, which was sufficiently conservative to ban the playing
of musical instruments at its services; worshippers sang the
hymns a cappella. Despite this stricture, Grant was allowed to
begin taking piano lessons when she was ten. While in the
seventh grade at the private Ensworth grammar school, she turned
to the guitar. Although she was baptized in the Church of
Christ, she soon followed her sister Mimi in attending a
breakaway variant of the faith, the Belmont Church of Christ,
which took a less formal approach, more in keeping with the
Charismatic movement. While attending the private girls' prep
school Harpeth Hall, Grant began performing with her guitar at
devotional meetings at the school, playing songs by such
favorites as James Taylor, Carole King, and John Denver. None of
them, however, sang religious songs, so Grant augmented her
program with her own Christian-oriented compositions. While
working as an intern at a recording studio, she made a tape of
her songs for her parents that was heard by producer Brown
Bannister, who in turn played it for gospel singer Chris
Christian, recently retained by gospel label Word Records as a
talent scout. Christian took the tape to Word, which signed
Grant to a recording contract while she was still in her
mid-teens.
Amy Grant, her debut album, was released on Word's Myrrh Records
imprint in 1977. It sold 50,000 copies during its first year of
release, a very good sale for a Christian album at the time. The
songs "Old Man's Rubble" (written by Bannister), "What a
Difference You've Made in My Life" (written by Archie Jordan),
and "Beautiful Music" (written by Lanier Ferguson) all ranked as
Top Ten hits on Christian radio. Grant graduated from high
school in the spring of 1978 and began performing concerts
around the country that summer. At first, her touring was
restricted to two weekends a month as she attempted to combine
her budding musical career with college; she enrolled at Furman
University in Greenville, SC, in September.
My Father's Eyes, Grant's second album, was released in April
1979. The ballad "Father's Eyes" had been written by Gary
Chapman, a young aspiring Christian songwriter, and it carried a
subtle religious message rather than the sort of overt statement
typical of gospel music. That message was positive, and it
alluded to elements of Christian belief, but it also could be
appreciated in nearly secular terms. The more openly religious
"Faith Walkin' People" also earned Top Ten airplay on Christian
radio, but "Father's Eyes" was the real hit off the album,
helping it to strong sales that would accumulate to a
gold-record certification by 1987. In the short term, My
Father's Eyes attracted enough attention to earn Grant her first
nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Gospel Performance,
Contemporary or Inspirational.
Grant focused on her school work while still finding time to
perform and record. Her third album, Never Alone (1980),
featured songs mostly written by some combination of her, Chris
Christian, Bannister, and Chapman, among them "Look What Has
Happened to Me," which Christian radio made a Top Ten hit, but
the LP was not as popular as My Father's Eyes, even though it
earned her a second Grammy nomination for Best Gospel
Performance, Contemporary or Inspirational. She toured with
Chapman as her opening act during the summer of 1980. She then
took a semester off from college and accepted concert dates on
the Billy Graham Crusade and as an opening act for the Bill
Gaither Trio. Instead of returning to Furman, she enrolled at
Vanderbilt University in Nashville for the spring 1981 semester,
but prior to that she undertook her first national headlining
tour, playing 40 dates starting in February, backed by the
Christian rock band of DeGarmo and Key. Some of the shows were
recorded, and Myrrh released two separate LPs, In Concert in May
and In Concert, Vol. 2 in November. Christian radio made Top Ten
hits out of two new songs from the discs, "Singing a Love Song"
(written by Jim Weber) from the first album and "I'm Gonna Fly"
from the second, and In Concert earned Grant her third
consecutive nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Gospel
Performance, Contemporary or Inspirational.
Grant's life and career reached a turning point in the spring of
1982. Unable to balance her college studies with her performing
and recording work, she dropped out of Vanderbilt 20 credits shy
of her degree. Before that, she had accepted Chapman's proposal,
and she married him on June 19. By then, her star was on the
rise following the April release of her fourth studio album, Age
to Age. This was her breakthrough as a gospel singer and, more
than that, an album that tested the limits of how popular gospel
music could be. Christian radio found three Top Ten hits
starting with the number-one "Sing Your Praise to the Lord"
(written by Richard Mullins), followed by "El Shaddai" (written
by Michael Card and John Thompson) and "In a Little While." Age
to Age entered Billboard magazine's Inspirational chart in July
and quickly raced to number one, where it stayed for an
astonishing 85 weeks. It won Grant her first Grammy Award for
Best Gospel Performance, Contemporary, and it finally earned her
recognition from the Gospel Music Association, which gave her
its Dove Awards for Gospel Artist of the Year and
Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year. ("El Shaddai" was named
Gospel Song of the Year.) In November 1983, Age to Age became
the first gospel album by a solo artist to be certified gold; it
went platinum in June 1985. Myrrh assembled a medley of the
album's songs for release as an EP in the spring of 1983, and
"Ageless Medley" made the Top Ten of the Christian radio charts
and won Grant her second Grammy, for Best Gospel Performance,
Female.
Age to Age made Grant a superstar within the gospel field. With
that, her managers, Michael Blanton and Dan Harrell, began
considering whether she could project her career beyond the
gospel genre. In the summer of 1983, they sent her to the
Caribou Ranch in Colorado, a first-rate recording facility used
by the likes of Chicago and Elton John, to record a holiday LP.
The modestly titled A Christmas Album appeared in October.
Christian radio made "Emmanuel," a song written by Grant's
keyboard player, Michael W. Smith, a Top 20 hit, and the album
peaked at number 4 in Billboard's Inspirational chart. It became
a perennial seller, going gold in November 1985 and platinum
four years later. As Grant worked on her next album, Blanton and
Harrell began booking her outside the usual gospel music
circuit, and they did so with success. In December 1983, she
sold out two dates at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles.
Straight Ahead, Grant's fifth studio album, was released in
February 1984, and while it did not equal the commercial success
of Age to Age, it was also very popular. On March 31, it
ascended to number one on Billboard's Inspirational chart,
holding that position for 61 weeks. Christian radio made hits
out of four of its songs: "Angels," which hit number one; "Thy
Word"; "Jehovah" (written by Geoffrey P. Thurman), and "The Now
and the Not Yet" (written by Pam Mark Hall). "Angels" won Grant
her third Grammy for Best Gospel Performance, Female, and the
album won the Dove Award for Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year.
Meanwhile, Blanton and Harrell continued to look beyond the
gospel market. In the spring of 1984, Grant starred with Paul
Williams and Tom Wopat in an hour-long TV special called Story,
Songs and Stars that was based on the Cinderella story; it
featured her music video for "It's Not a Song," a track from
Straight Ahead with no overt religious theme. That summer, she
toured the U.S. opening shows for country star Kenny Rogers. By
October, she had sold out two shows at Radio City Music Hall in
New York City, hardly a hotbed of gospel music.
All of this helped to set up Grant's major crossover move of
1985. Word Records made a distribution deal with the large
independent label A&M Records, which reissued Straight Ahead
just as Grant was appearing on the Grammy Awards show in
February 1985, singing "Angels." As a result, the year-old album
broke into the Billboard pop album chart in April; in May it
went gold. That same month, Grant's sixth regular studio album,
Unguarded was released simultaneously by Myrrh for the Christian
market and by A&M for the pop market. The overt Christian
messages of the songs on Age to Age and Straight Ahead were
scaled back considerably on Unguarded, which often featured
hopeful, but religiously ambiguous lyrics. That, however, did
not prevent Christian radio from giving airplay to five songs:
"Find a Way," which hit number one; "Wise Up" (by Wayne
Kirkpatrick and Billy Simon); "Everywhere I Go" (by Mary Lee
Kortes); "Sharayah"; and "Love of Another Kind." A&M's
promotional muscle got "Find a Way" into the pop Top 40, and
"Wise Up," became a minor pop chart entry. ("Find a Way" reached
the Top Ten of the Adult Contemporary [AC] chart, and both "Wise
Up" and "Everywhere I Go" also reached this chart.) Supported by
an 18-month tour, the album went gold in September 1985 and
platinum in June 1986, after it had won Grant her third Grammy
for Best Gospel Performance, Female and the Dove Award for
Artist of the Year.
As Grant continued to tour in support of Unguarded, A&M and
Myrrh released The Collection in July 1986, a compilation that
topped the Inspirational chart for 29 weeks and went gold in
February 1987, then platinum in August 1989. The album contained
two newly recorded tracks, "Stay for Awhile" and "Love Can Do."
Both made the Top Ten of the Christian radio chart, "Stay for
Awhile" at number one; "Stay for Awhile" also made the Top 20 of
the AC chart. Grant won a Dove Award for Short Form Music Video
of the Year for the song. Her increasing profile in the music
business resulted in opportunities to work with other artists.
Producer Michael Omartian, whom she knew from the Christian
music field, invited her to duet with former Chicago singer
Peter Cetera on "The Next Time I Fall," a song for Cetera's
second solo album, Solitude/Solitaire. The album was released on
Warner Bros. Records in June 1986, and "The Next Time I Fall,"
billed to Peter Cetera with Amy Grant, was issued as its second
single in September. Spurred by a stylish video that ran
frequently on MTV, the single topped the AC chart in November
and the pop chart in December, leading to a Grammy nomination
for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. At the
same time, the always Christmas-conscious Grant had joined Art
Garfunkel in recording a suite of songs written by Jimmy Webb as
The Animals' Christmas, released by Columbia Records in
November, and Garfunkel joined Grant on her first network
television special, Headin' Home for the Holidays, which was
broadcast on NBC in December. (There was also a home-video
version, retitled Amy Grant's Old Fashioned Christmas, which
went gold in 1992.)
Having completed all her recording and promotional activities in
December 1986, Grant announced that she was pregnant and
temporarily retired to prepare for the arrival of her first
child. Matthew Garrison Chapman was born September 25, 1987. His
mother returned to the music business with the release of her
seventh studio album of new material, Lead Me On, in June 1988.
Lead Me On was a surprisingly serious effort from Grant, its
title track discussing (albeit in poetically heightened terms)
slavery and the Holocaust, while "Faithless Heart" described
adulterous temptations and "What About the Love" (written by Kye
Fleming and Janis Ian) cast a skeptical eye on preachers, Wall
Street brokers, and nursing homes. With a glossy pop production
and Grant's impassioned vocals, the album was well received
critically, leading to the by-now expected awards: a fifth
Grammy for Best Gospel Performance, Female, Dove Awards for
Artist of the Year, Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year, and
Short Form Music Video of the Year for the track "Lead Me On."
But it marked something of a speed bump in terms of Grant's
career as a record seller. Christian radio was enthralled,
giving significant airplay to six songs: "Saved by Love" (number
one), "Lead Me On" (number one), "1974" (a song about youthful
conversion that led off the LP), "What About the Love" (number
one), "Say Once More," and "Faithless Heart." The pop market was
less impressed, however. The AC chart listed both "1974" and
"Saved by Love," but only in minor positions, and "Lead Me On"
spent just two weeks in the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number
96. The album shipped gold and topped the Inspirational chart
for 36 weeks, but despite a promotional tour that ran from
September 1988 to March 1989, playing to a million fans in 135
cities, Lead Me On was a commercial disappointment from a pop
perspective. (In March 2002, CCM magazine announced the results
of a poll of its readers that named Lead Me On the #1
Contemporary Christian Music album of all time.)
At the end of the Lead Me On Tour, Grant took another pregnancy
leave, her only significant recording activity for the year
being a performance of the hymn "‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in
Jesus" on the Word Records various artists album Our Hymns; she
co-arranged the song, which earned her a share of a Dove Award
for Country Recorded Song of the Year. On December 18, 1989, she
gave birth to Gloria Mills Chapman, known as Millie. On May 26,
1990, a Billboard poll on the 1980s named Grant Gospel Artist of
the Decade and Age to Age Album of the Decade. She would become
equally successful in the ‘90s, but would do so by leaving
gospel music behind almost entirely. Heart in Motion, her eighth
new studio album, largely downplayed the serious side she had
revealed on Lead Me On in favor of frothy pop/rock music.
Released in March 1991, it was accompanied by an aggressive
promotional campaign on the part of A&M Records. (Grant later
claimed that the label was trying to make up for its recent loss
of Janet Jackson to Virgin Records by creating a new female pop
superstar.) That campaign, along with a music video depicting
Grant and a male actor pretending to be in love, helped make
"Baby Baby" (which Grant said she actually wrote about her
daughter) into a number-one pop hit in April, leading to Grammy
nominations for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best
Female Pop Vocal Performance. It was followed by four more Top
40 hits, each accompanied by a music video, the first three of
which also reached the Top Ten: "Every Heartbeat," "That's What
Love Is For," "Good for Me," and "I Will Remember You." As a
result, the album sold five million copies by the end of 1997.
(The Heart in Motion Video Collection, meanwhile, went gold.)
The Christian market came along, too, with Heart in Motion
enjoying 32 weeks at number one on Billboard's Top Contemporary
Christian Albums chart, while Christian radio found six songs it
could broadcast, though it tended to prefer more thoughtful fare
such as "Hope Set High" and "Ask Me" (which treated the subject
of pedophilia and even asked the thorny theological question of
how God could let such a condition occur).
Grant toured North America and Europe from July 1991 to March
1992. The following month, she was again named Artist of the
Year at the Dove Awards and also picked up a Dove for Song of
the Year as the co-author of Michael W. Smith's "Place in This
World." She went on pregnancy leave a third time, but managed to
contribute a cover of the Elvis Presley hit "Love Me Tender" to
the soundtrack for Honeymoon in Vegas, released in August, and
to record a second seasonal album, Home for Christmas, released
in October, which hit number two and went platinum in short
order. On October 11, 1992, she gave birth to Sarah Cannon
Chapman, named after Harpeth Hall alumna Minnie Pearl, the Grand
Ole Opry comedienne whose real name was Sarah Ophelia Colley.
With the massive success of Heart in Motion, Grant could afford
to take some time off before tackling another album, but she
undertook several recording projects in 1993. She participated
in two spoken-word albums for children, The Gingham Dog & the
Calico Cat with music by Chet Atkins and The Creation with music
by Béla Fleck, both released by the Rabbit Ears label. And she
and Chapman put together Songs from the Loft, a various artists
collection of religious tunes for teenagers that won the 1994
Dove Award for Praise and Worship Album of the Year. Then she
turned her attention to her ninth regular studio album, emerging
with House of Love in August 1994. The album was patterned after
Heart in Motion, with a combination of catchy romantic songs
meant to hit the pop charts and more spiritual efforts to
satisfy her Christian fans. The result was another
multi-platinum success, even if the album sold less than half
what its predecessor had. "Lucky One" made the Top 20, the title
song (a duet with country star Vince Gill written by Wally
Wilson, Kenny Greenberg, and Greg Barnhill, and featured in the
film Speechless) hit the Top 40, and a cover of the Joni
Mitchell standard "Big Yellow Taxi" reached the lower end of the
singles chart. Meanwhile, the album topped Billboard's #1
Contemporary Christians (Albums) chart for 12 weeks and
Christian radio found five other songs to play, among them
"Children of the World" and "Helping Hand," both of which hit
number one. Grant embarked on a year-long tour in support of the
album that concluded in September 1995. A month earlier, she had
been featured on the various artists album My Utmost for His
Highest, singing the song "Lover of My Soul." This enabled her
to share in a 1996 Dove Award for Special Event Album of the
Year.
In February 1996, Grant was featured on the soundtrack for the
film Mr. Wrong, singing the 1976 10cc hit "The Things We Do for
Love," which reached the AC chart. In December, she performed
two sold-out shows dubbed "Amy Grant's Tennessee Christmas" at
the Nashville Arena, beginning what became an annual event.
Otherwise, she spent 1996 and much of 1997 working on her tenth
regular studio album, Behind the Eyes, which was released in
September 1997. The album earned critical approbation for what
reviewers saw as a return to her early folk-rock style and for
its serious, introspective lyrics. It would have been equally
accurate to note that Grant, who always paid close attention to
current trends in pop, had dropped the heavy synthesizers and
drum programming after listening to new competitors like Sheryl
Crow and Jewel. As for the lyrics, while Grant had always
emphasized the travails of life, contrasted with the benefits of
spiritual support, on Behind the Eyes many fans thought they
detected suggestions of real-life romantic discord. The album
entered the pop chart at number 8 and went gold in less than
three months as "Takes a Little Time" became a Top 40 pop
airplay and Top Ten AC hit, while "Like I Love You" also made
the AC Top Ten and "I Will Be Your Friend" (written by Michelle
Lewis, Dane DeVillier, and Sean Hosein) also reached the AC
chart. The album won a Dove Award for Pop/Contemporary Album of
the Year. Grant toured for a month in the fall of 1997, returned
to the road for four months in March 1998, and played 22 cities
on a Christmas tour in November and December 1998. Meanwhile,
there was other recording activity. She sang a duet with actor
Kevin Costner on a cover of the Lovin' Spoonful's "You Didn't
Have to Be So Nice" for the soundtrack of his film The Postman
(December 1997); she and country singer Bryan White sang a duet
on "With These Hands" from the various artists recording of
songs from composer Frank Wildhorn's Broadway musical The Civil
War called The Civil War: The Nashville Sessions (October 1998);
and she sang "River Lullaby" on the soundtrack of the animated
movie musical The Prince of Egypt (December 1998).
Grant and Chapman announced their separation after more than 16
years of marriage on December 30, 1998. Grant filed for divorce
in March 1999, and the couple was divorced in June. The same
month, she paired with the British Christian rock band
Delirious? on "Find Me in the River," a song on the various
artists album Streams that earned her a share in the 2000 Dove
Award for Special Event Album of the Year. In September 1999,
she returned to acting in the television movie A Song from the
Heart, a drama in which she played a blind cellist. In October,
she released her third seasonal album, A Christmas to Remember,
which topped Billboard's Contemporary Christian Albums chart for
five weeks starting in November, made the pop Top 40, and went
gold. Her television special of the same name was broadcast at
the same time.
On March 10, 2000, Grant married Vince Gill. She gave birth to
her fourth child, Corrina Grant Gill, one year and two days
later. In May 2002, she released Legacy…Hymns & Faith, her first
album of overtly religious music since her pop crossover,
consisting largely of traditional material with several
originals included. It topped Billboard's Contemporary Christian
Albums chart and entered the pop chart at number 21. Grant and
her producers, Gill and Brown Bannister, won the 2003 Dove Award
for Inspirational Album of the Year, and Grant and Gill won the
Dove for Country Recorded Song of the Year for the track "The
River's Gonna Keep On Rolling" (written by Gill). Grant returned
to pop music with her first secular album in six years when she
released Simple Things in August 2003. The album topped
Billboard's Christian Albums chart and entered the pop chart at
number 23, the same number achieved by the title song on the AC
chart. Grant seemed to sum up her hit-making period with the
release of Greatest Hits 1986-2004 and the companion DVD
Greatest Videos 1986-2004 in October 2004. Soon after, she
announced that she had ended her association with A&M Records,
noting that she no longer fit with the label.
In April 2005, Grant and NBC announced that she would host a
reality TV special, Three Wishes, that also would serve as the
pilot for a possible series. On the show, she and a team of
experts would make wishes come true for participants. Grant’s
follow-up to Legacy…Hymns & Faith, titled Rock of Ages…Hymns &
Faith, was released in May 2005 on Word/Curb/Warner Bros.
Records. ~ William Ruhlmann
, All Music Guide
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