This Amy Grant article is set Amy Grant Amy Grant the American musician. For the American baby-kisser, Amy Grant see Amy Grant (baby-kisser).
Amy Lee Grant (born NovemAmy Grant ber 25, 1960) is an American sAmy Grant inger, songwriter, and musician. Amy Grant She started out in modern-day Christian Amy Grant tune Amy Grant (CCM) before crossing over to pop track inside the Eighties and 1990s. She has been called “The Queen of Christian Pop”.[1][2]
As of 2009 she had offered more than 30 million albums worldwide,[3] gained six Grammy Awards, 22 Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, and had the first Christian album to go platinum.[four] She become honored with a celeb on Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006[5] for her contributions to the amusement industry and in 2022, she become introduced as a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors.[6]
Grant made her debut in her twenties, gaining reputation in Christian track in the course of the Eighties with such hits as “Father’s Eyes”, “El Shaddai”, and “Angels”. In the mid-Eighties, she commenced broadening her target market and soon became one of the first CCM artists to pass over into mainstream pop on the heels of her a hit albums Unguarded and Lead Me On.
In 1986, she scored her first Billboard Hot a hundred No. 1 tune in a duet with Peter Cetera, “The Next Time I Fall”. In 1991, she released the blockbuster album Heart in Motion which became her pleasant-selling album to date, topping the Billboard Christian album chart for 32 weeks, selling 5 million copies inside the U.S. and generating her 2d No. 1 pop unmarried “Baby Baby” and produced some other 3 pinnacle 10 on Billboard Hot 100; “That’s What Love Is For”, “Every Heartbeat” and “Good for Me”.
She is the writer of numerous books, which includes a memoir, Mosaic: Pieces of My Life So Far, and a book primarily based at the popular Christmas track “Breath of Heaven (Mary’s Song)” that she co-wrote.Background[edit]Early life and career[edit]
Born in Augusta, Georgia, Grant is the youngest of 4 sisters. Her circle of relatives settled in Nashville in 1967.[7] She is a outstanding-granddaughter of Nashville philanthropist A. M. Burton (founder of Life and Casualty Insurance Company, eponym of Amy Grant Nashville’s Life & Casualty Tower, WLAC Radio, and WLAC-TV) and Lillie Burton.[eight][nine][10][eleven][12] She has recounted the Amy Grant have an impact on of the Burtons on her development as a musician, beginning with their commonplace membership in Nashville’s Ashwood Church of Christ.[thirteen]
In 1976, Grant wrote her first music (“Mountain Top”), accomplished in public for the first time at Harpeth Hall School, the all-girls faculty she attended in Nashville. She recorded a demo tape for her parents with church kids-leader Brown Bannister. While Bannister was dubbing a replica of the tape, Chris Christian, the owner of the recording studio heard the demo and known as Word Records. He performed it over the smartphone and she turned into presented a recording settlement, five weeks earlier than her 16th birthday.
In 1977, she recorded her first album, Amy Grant, produced by using Brown Bannister, Amy Grant who could additionally produce her subsequent 11 albums. It become released in early 1978, one month before her high-college graduation. Toward the stop of 1978 she carried out her first ticketed live performance after starting her first yr at Furman University.
In May 1979, while on the album-launch celebration for her 2nd album, My Father’s Eyes, Grant Amy Grant met Gary Chapman, who had written the name music and could come to be her first husband.Grant and Chapman toured together in mid-1979. In overdue 1980, she transferred to Vanderbilt University where she changed into a member of the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta.[7] Grant then made some more albums before dropping out of university to pursue a career in song—Never Alone, observed through a couple of stay albums in 1981 (In Concert and In Concert Volume Two), each subsidized by way of an augmented edition of the DeGarmo & Key band. It become during these early shows that Grant also installed considered one of her live performance logos: acting barefoot. To date, Grant keeps to take off her shoes halfway through performances, as she has said, “it’s miles just extra comfortable.”[14][15]
1982 saw the release of her breakthrough album Age to Age. The album contains the signature song, “El Shaddai” (written by means of Michael Card) and the Grant-Chapman penned music, “In a Little While”. “El Shaddai” was later provided one of the “Songs of the Century” through the RIAA in 2001. Grant obtained her first Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Gospel Performance, in addition to GMA Dove Awards for Gospel Artist of the Year and Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year. Age to Age became the primary Christian album through a solo artist to be licensed gold (1983) and the primary Christian album to be licensed platinum (1985).[4]
In the mid-Nineteen Eighties, Grant started out journeying and recording with young up-and-coming songwriter Michael W. Smith. Grant and Smith keep to have a robust friendship and creative dating, regularly writing songs for or contributing vocals to each other’s albums, and as of 2019, often travelling together annually all through November and December setting on Christmas live shows. During the Eighties, Grant became also a backup singer for Bill Gaither.[sixteen]
Grant accompanied this album with the primary of her Christmas albums, which might later be the basis for her excursion indicates. In 1984, she released any other pop-orientated Christian hit, Straight Ahead, incomes Grant her first appearance at the Grammy Awards show in 1985. The head of NBC took be aware of Grant’s overall performance and referred to as her supervisor to ebook her for her very own Christmas unique.[7]Widening target audience[edit]
Hardly had Grant hooked up herself as the “Queen of Christian Pop” whilst she modified instructions to widen her fan base (and as a result her musical message). Her goal changed into to Amy Grant grow to be the first Christian singer-songwriter who was additionally a success as a modern-day pop singer.[17] Unguarded (1985) surprised some lovers for its very mainstream sound (and Grant’s leopard-print jacket, in 4 poses for 4 one of a kind covers). “Find a Way”, from Unguarded, became one of the few non-Christmas Christian songs to hit the Billboard Top 40 listing, also achieving No. 7 on the Adult Contemporary chart. She additionally scored No. 18 on Billboard AC in 1986 with “Stay for Awhile”.[quotation needed] Grant scored her first Billboard No. 1 tune in 1986 with “The Next Time I Fall”, a duet with former Chicago singer/bassist Peter Cetera. That 12 months, she also recorded a duet with singer Randy Stonehill for his Love Beyond Reason album, titled “I Could Never Say Goodbye”, and recorded The Animals’ Christmas with Art Garfunkel.
Lead Me On (1988) contained Amy Grant many songs which have been approximately Christianity and love relationships, however a few interpreted it as now not being sufficient of a “Christian” report. Years later Lead Me On would be chosen as the finest Contemporary Christian album of all time with the aid of CCM Magazine. The mainstream song “Saved by means of Love” turned into a minor hit, receiving airplay on radio Amy Grant stations featuring the newly emerging Adult Contemporary format. The album’s identify song obtained a few pop radio airplay and crossed over to No. ninety six at the Billboard Hot one hundred, and “1974 (We Were Young)” and “Saved By Love” also charted as Adult Contemporary songs. In 1989, she appeared in a Target advert campaign, appearing songs off the album.[18]In the mainstream[edit]
Grant all through her Behind the Eyes excursion in 1998
When Heart in Motion changed into launched in 1991, many fanatics had been surprised that the album changed into so virtually one of cutting-edge pop track. Grant’s desire to widen her target market was frowned upon via the confines of the popular definitions of ministry at the time.[19] The music “Baby Baby” (written for Grant’s newborn daughter Millie, of whom Grant wrote, her “six-week-old face changed into my proposal”) have become a pop hit (hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100), and Grant was established as a call in the mainstream song global. “Baby Baby” obtained Grammy nominations for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Record and Song of the Year (even though it failed to win in any of these categories).