Past Internet Articles About Amy Grant

Amy Grant recharges her career
Star of pop, Christian music will play a range of songs tonight
By DAVID YONKE
BLADE STAFF WRITER

Choosing a set list for a concert or picking songs for a greatest hits collection is a lot like sorting through clothes from an old wardrobe, according to Amy Grant.

"It's kind of like I have a closet of 30-year-old clothes and you're digging through bellbottoms from the '70s and it's, 'Oh my gosh! I remember this! I remember that!' " Grant said in a recent interview.

The six-time Grammy Award-winning pop star and pioneer of contemporary Christian music plans to pick out a variety of old favorites for her concert tonight, backed by her six-person band, at the Ritz Theatre in Tiffin.

Grant said she doesn't think her fans will mind if she skips around between genres and eras, and she added that she likes to keep an ear out for audience requests.

"I figure if somebody's gone to the length of buying a ticket, they are probably fairly familiar that I sing all kinds of stuff," Grant said. "I always felt that to really make a great set list, you just mix up songs that make you laugh, make you cry, and remind you what you believe in."

While Grant made her mark as a Christian music star, she came to the mainstream's attention in the early 1990s with a string of crossover hits that included "Baby Baby," "Every Heartbeat," "That's What Love Is For," and "Good for Me."

Today, she said, she does not draw lines between her Christian music and her mainstream pop career.

"Being a songwriter, I don't compartmentalize like that. My only compartments are good songs and bad songs," she said.

Grant has been in the spotlight since high school, signing her first record deal at the tender age of 15 and scoring folk-pop Christian hits in the late 1970s and early '80s with songs such as "My Father's Eyes," "El Shaddai," and "Age to Age."

In the mid-1980s, she helped create the contemporary Christian music genre, leaving the stuffy church image behind to wear leopard-skin jackets and dance on stage to high-energy beats. She rocked out for Jesus with such hits as "Angels," "Wise Up," "Find a Way," "Lead Me On," and "Stay for Awhile," and gave another Christian music superstar a start by hiring a then-unknown keyboardist named Michael W. Smith.

But in 1999, Grant's stature as a Christian music icon was tarnished when she filed for divorce from singer Gary Chapman, with whom she had three children, and then it slipped another notch when she married country star Vince Gill a year later.

Some of her Christian music fans felt she had let them down, and a few even held anti-divorce demonstrations outside of her concerts. Some Christian radio stations stopped playing her songs.

"The first thing I would say is, 'I'm sorry,'�" Grant told CCM Magazine in 2002. "I did the best I could and in some arenas, my best was not good enough. I've made some bad choices."

She added that "life is often messy" and "that's why we need Jesus."

Grant has sold more than 25 million albums in her career and won 26 Dove Awards, but she hasn't been at the top of her game since the new millennium dawned.

She hosted a prime-time reality show, Three Wishes, in 2005 but NBC dropped it after a short run. Her 2006 album, "Rock of Ages � Hymns & Faith" won a Grammy Award but in the relatively minor category of best Southern, country or bluegrass gospel, and the sales were not up to her previous marks.

But the singer-songwriter is feeling more upbeat about her career now and is genuinely excited about having signed with a new label last year.

"I'm 47 and I signed my first record deal when I was 15 and stayed with Word Records - well A&M came on board as well - but my contract with Word ended after 30 years and last year I signed with EMI," Grant said.

EMI has been going through her discography and is re-releasing her critically acclaimed 1988 CD "Lead Me On" and will reissue one of Grant's Christmas albums, with both discs featuring new bonus material.

Grant also is in high gear for an album to be released next year, writing plenty of new songs.

"It's really, really exciting to have [EMI's] enthusiasm, as I have to relaunch myself," she said. "I'm experiencing a kind of energy that I haven't felt in well over a decade.

"In the last 10 years of my life there has been a lot of change and so I'm excited where this next chapter might lead. I just am so certain that my best songwriting is ahead. And that is what really keeps me churning," Grant said.

Amy Grant and her band will be in concert at 7:30 tonight at the Ritz Theatre, 30 South Washington St., Tiffin. Tickets are $40 to $75 from the box office, 419-448-8544.