Past Internet Articles About Amy Grant

Amy Talks With ChristianMusicPlanet.com
08/07/08
By Andree Farias

Without any reservations, CCM Magazine once crowned Amy Grant�s Lead Me On the best album in the history of Christian music. But more than the Grammy or the acclaim it received, it marked a new era for Grant: she was no longer the girl next door, but an artist of substance, paving the way for transparency and honesty in artistic expressions of faith. Today, 20 years after the release of that seminal recording, Sparrow Records is giving the album the royal treatment it deserves, complete with a remaster, a bonus disc of live material and re-recorded favorites, and extensive liner notes. In this interview, Grant reminisces about the album�from recording and singing its songs live to recreating the magic in an upcoming commemorative tour.

CMP: Lead Me On was a pivotal album for you�a coming of age of sorts. You could say it was the album where you went from being the girl next door to being a woman coming to grips with her faith. Did it feel that way at the time for you?

Amy Grant: At that time, everything was changing. My grandmother passed away that year. I became a mother for the fist time. The recording environment was different form what I�d experienced with records before that. It felt like a natural evolution of creativity. It didn�t feel extraordinarily different. But I think at that time in my life�having had enough difficulties�I didn�t want to be the faith cheerleader anymore. CMP: Is that why the disc was darker and more introspective than anything you�d done before?

Grant: Not intentionally. And it wasn�t that I had a crisis of faith. It wasn�t that I didn�t believe. That�s not the case at all. I had just lived enough�at that point I�d already been to marriage counseling, and I was adjusting to a child. I think I was scratching my own head, �I don�t understand a lot of things about life; I don�t understand a lot of things about relationships. I don�t understand hypocrisy in myself and other people.� So I think it was just such an honest assessment of life as I knew it.

CMP: You were pregnant during the recording process and had your baby during the recording process. Did people think you were nuts at the time for doing that?

Grant: The two weeks of recording around my son�s birth, we were actually cutting tracks, so I didn�t have to sound very good. I was big and winded, but it didn�t matter because I was just there doing the guide vocals. I was there in the studio pretty nonstop, but we actually waited a few weeks for my stitches to heal before I tried to actually sing (laughs). I had to work pretty hard to sing anyway. I noticed that it was actually tougher. I felt like my voice was a lot more inconsistent, but I think it was because of all the hormonal changes going on.

CMP: CCM Magazine voted Lead Me On the best Christian album of all time. Did you ever think the album would become this larger-than-life thing?

Grant: No. I guess I don�t really think that way. When I work on something, I�m just so focused on the actual project that it would make me feel nervous if I [thought], �I wonder how this is going to be.� I try to lowball the expectations, but my expectations are not about record sales or concert attendance. It�s always like, �Gee, I hope they like this as much as I do.� [Or,] �I hope this harmony part really kills my friend as much as it kills me.� The popularity of something�you�re talking about something beyond your control. You�re just setting yourself up for disaster if your goal is something like sales.

CMP: What can fans expect from the upcoming �Lead Me On Tour�? Will it be an �80s extravaganza, or will it be closer to your current sound?

Grant: I�m working with the majority of the Lead Me On band. That�s exciting to me because they�re people that I haven�t worked with since 1989. But we�re going to sound the way that we sound now. I don�t know if I can sing those songs in the same key that they were recorded in. When I get up to sing songs that I wrote 20 or 25 or 30 years ago, I say, �This is me now.� We will, as much as possible, be true to the production in a live setting. But this is me now, and I sound like I sound now. I�m still making records, but I don�t sound like I did then.

CMP: Lead Me On marked the end of an era for you�it was the preamble to Heart in Motion. How did it prepare you for the monster success of that album?

Grant: I think that the honesty in that record allowed me to remain relatively normal in what became sort of a crazy, very busy time musically. It prepared me also in that I worked really hard on that record in the studio and touring, so I understood the value of hard work and just how hard you have to work.

What was unique was that the pop success that I had shortly after that, just to be preceded by such an honest record�Lead Me On�I think it allowed me to not be [known as a fluffy artist]. And that was nice. When I would go in for an interview�whether it was a radio station or television�the questions were not all stupid like, �What handbag are you carrying? Who does your hair and makeup?� There was more substance and life to talk about.

CMP: Could we expect Heart in Motion to get a similar treatment in 2011?

Grant: No. Heart in Motion has gotten its own attention. It�s a different kind of record. But I think this is probably the only retrospective record that I�ll do. Hopefully, three years from now I�ll be busy singing and touring new songs that I hope gain some kind of an audience.