From Unguarded to The Me That Remains: The Tao of Amy Grant
This is an updated version of a piece previously published in 2003 in the pop-culture magazine Ape Culture.
This is going to be a long haul. Just like life. Anything worth having is worth working for, I say.
As far as religion is concerned, I was raised with the very simple yet highly effective mantra for being good: don’t be a selfish asshole. And literally that was it. It was easy to follow because it was both easy to remember and not open to vague interpretations. No weekly sermon was required. No bizarre rituals. Hypocrisy was easy to spot within its parameters. It’s worked so well, I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket. (I've since gotten a speeding ticket.)
In fact, it’s possible I go overboard from time to time. For example, before Thanksgiving of 2003 while I was transporting my new pet fish home from his office fishbowl in downtown Los Angeles, I turned down the volume on my car radio in sudden dismay that ‘maybe Basho doesn’t like Abba as much as I do.’
(Basho has since left this mortal coil. R.I.P. Basho.)
I’m a far cry from perfect; this goes without saying. But I do care about the feelings of others (in person, if not always effectively in writing) – even when I’m told that in this dog-eat-dog world, I shouldn’t bother (I wrote that phrase in 2003 and now 23 years later things are infinitely worse) – and I try to contain my instinctive greed and self-absorption. (How many of us are left out there??) But toward this end, I’ve also developed an aversion to aggressive preaching from other flawed souls who practice more complicated forms of trying to be good.
Being good surely means something more than accepting some organized paradigm. It involves sincerely appreciating what you have, understanding the trials of others, the desire to help others, living your life to its fullest, questioning our own heart, trying to love without inhibitions, and actively exploring how this fascinating universe works.
For these reasons, I’ve never had any real interest in perusing the genre of Christian pop music for all its limited scope and exclusive, close-minded thinking. But back in high school, during Amy Grant's Heart in Motion "crossover" era, I had two Christian girlfriends invite me to see an Amy Grant concert at the local amphitheater in St. Louis. And her songs were so catchy and full of good heart. "Ask Me" was the song that I came home unable to get out of my head. It was rough and brave.
Her lyrics and melodies often stuck with me. I'm sure I greatly confused my friends by becoming an Amy Grant fan without wanting to go with them on their Christian retreat. But one of those friends also loaned me her cassette copy of the Unguarded album and I loved it. I found other albums at my local library and made myself a mix tape.
Fast forward to 2003 when I came across her recent album of the time, Simple Things, at my local Los Angeles public library. I had a job downtown and I would listen to it on the way into work through rush hour traffic.
Once again, a new line in the album struck me powerfully, so much so I kept repeating it in my head for days; and it helped me start interacting with people in a new way. (I have since forgotten what that line was.) Before long, the whole album had captivated me with its sustained peacefulness and concentrated contemplation.
Amy Grant lyrics occasionally have a way of getting to the bone of the matter, speaking to both our spiritual resolve and something complicated in our fragile hearts. And she can do this in a way that comes across as ‘on the level’ rather than preachy. It’s as if you can tell she’s doing some real labor with these tangles of God and humanity she’s tinkering with.
For years, Amy Grant has been known as a Christian singer who turned secular which is incorrect. Yes, her 1990s cross-over hit album, Heart in Motion, was marketed as a secular record and introduced her to many new pop fans like me. (I have since read other testimonies from other secular fans). Every single Amy Grant album to date seems to reference a Christian God formally at least once.
Interestingly, crossing the line from gospel to pop is encouraged by artists of color, such as Aretha Franklin, Stephanie Mills or Al Green. Gospel and soul are acceptably interchangeable genres for those artists. But white Christian music fans back in the 1990s weren't so generous. Grant was accused of selling out. But whether her albums fell on one side of the Christian or secular marketing line, Grant has never stopped singing about spirituality.
Grant’s early suburban-high-school sounding white voice, full to the brim with that sound of sweet innocence, suited her particularly well to Christian “youth gospel." Christian singers never seemed to wail like their gospel counterparts. There was something typical about Grant’s voice, which may explain her early 1990s, girl-next-door popularity. Her voice is often disparagingly described as “pretty” and “pleasant.”
Up to 2003, Amy Grant co-wrote the majority of her songs with a common circle of writers, which include one-time husband Gary Chapman, longtime producer Brown Bannister, the popular Christian singer/songwriters Michael W. Smith and Wayne Kirkpatrick, among others.
Her material seemed to progress over time. Years ago I created these very imperfect categories:
(1) Tributes to God and Jesus: "Emmanuel," "El Shaddai," "Sing Your Praise to the Lord," "Angels," "Thy Word" - it's like listening to Christmas music for me; I'm there in some kind of musical spirit, if not exactly all the details.
(2) Some kind of firm religious resolution: "I Have Decided," "Too Late," "Sharayah" - she's very believable in this conviction.
(3) Songs that celebrate the sort of paternal hierarchy of Christianity and the sound of being a "good girl": "Father’s Eyes" and "I’m Gonna Fly"
(3) Self-actualization, spiritual growth and romantic love: material from the albums Unguarded to Heart in Motion - she's growing up and calibrating in these songs.
(4) Difficult personal change, suffering, introspection and re-evaluation: the albums Behind the Eyes and Simple Things and beyond. She's starting to deal more with personal conflict in her material. The moral content of the lyrics are moving from toe-the-line Christian fortitude to forgiveness and a philosophy of living in the God-spangled Now. Consequently, her cumulative message starts taking on a larger, extra-Christian-encompassing spirit.
This movement can be seen as an evolution from simplistic religious innocence (constant Christian call-outs to Jesus and the Messiah) to hard-core soul searching (more inclusive and open concepts like miracles, forgiveness, and the generic God).
The Collection - 1986
Before her pop radio breakthrough, Grant had already released popular Christian albums.
This Christian greatest hits compilation encompassed the following albums: Amy Grant (1977) – released at age 16; My Father’s Eyes (1979); Never Alone (1980); In Concert (1981); Age to Age (1982); In Concert, Volume 2 (1982); Straight Ahead (1984); and Unguarded (1985), the album that contained her first secular breakthrough song, “Find a Way.”
The Collection also had the nice pop song "Stay Awhile" that I really liked.
The material, although inexperienced spiritually, is nicely catchy and some of these albums earned Grant both Grammys and Dove awards. However, compared to her later material, they are innocent and shy vocally and thick with Christian cliche.
“Angels” (from Straight Ahead/written by Brown Barrister, Gary Chapman, Amy Grant, and Michael W. Smith) tells the literal story of Herod sacking Peter in prison. The moral of the song is that the same angles who were watching over Peter are watching over Grant, who avoids the perils of modern life as a result. This is a self-absorbed religious philosophy that unacceptably labels too many poor, accident-prone souls as forsaken by God.
Grant sings “Emmanuel” (from A Christmas Album/Michael W. Smith) with such force of passion, the song becomes an over-the-top fan letter to the “Lord of life, Lord of all, Prince of Peace, mighty God, holy one, Emmanuel!”
“I Have Decided” (from Age to Age/Michael Card) is country/gospel and only encourages re-listening despite its trite message because it’s very catchy. It begins with promise, a discussion about a person’s religious awakening point and early-on alluding to a common type of deceptive religiosity:
“So forget the game of being good
And your self-righteous pain
Cause the only good inside your heart
Is the good that Jesus brings.”
Here we go again with exclusionary absolutes.
Equally catchy, the song “Too Late” (from Never Alone/Amy Grant, Brown Barrister, Chris Christian) does a slightly better job with the same intention. For those who are paralyzed with the indecision of good vs. evil, “it’s time to choose your side.” As if it were as easy as sides and life were a game ‘red rover, red rover, send the bad boy on over.’ It’s too late for walking on such fences, “no more middle line…better get wise!”
There are quite a few references to “getting wise” in early Grant lyrics, assuming that through due religious diligence an attainment of wisdom will come. In this paradigm, gaining wisdom is just part of becoming spiritually mature.
“Too Late” would fit in the above category of a kind of religious nagging to solidify your Christian fortitude: “Please make up your mind.” Unfortunately, such direct imperative-sounding ultimatums between humans often lead nowhere good.
The song “I’m Gonna Fly” (In Concert, Volume 2/Amy Grant) sounds like it could have been plucked from a Broadway musical about a little girl singing out to the universe from her back yard. The song captures a particular time of quixotic innocence, reminding me of the Cee-Lo Green song, “El Dorado Sunrise (Super Chicken).” Grant must have had similar dreams of living life to its fullest spiritually. She sings
“All my friends are happy to stay
Here in this yard day after day
But something inside me has called me away
I don’t understand but I know I can’t stay”
...and sets a course to pursue “a dream that’s mine…even if I am the only one who wants to fly.”
Interestingly, the year this song was written (1982) Grant married Gary Chapman who had written a few of her earlier hits about being a tenderly innocent and goodly Christian.
The song “All I Ever Have to Be”(from Never Alone/ Gary Chapman) and “Father’s Eyes”(from Father’s Eyes/Gary Chapman) are two examples of Chapman’s early work for Grant. “All I Ever Have to Be” could have succeeded as a Tao treatise on accepting the situation of your current state if not for the explicit invocation of the Christian father-figure. Humbly accept that you are part of God’s plan.
In “Father’s Eyes” we sense a double reference to both the biological father a little girl wants to please and the heavenly Father approving of his little Christian pilgrim, Amy Grant, with “eyes that find the good in things when good is not around.” At judgement day, she states she wants to be recognized for all the good she saw in life which sounds a bit like she’s doing it for the sake of a Fatherly pat on the head. Is that good? Or is that needy?
Before Grant introduced electric guitars and synthesizers into her material in 1984. She was still sing-songing her material with traditional piano arrangements. “Sing Your Praise to the Lord” (from Age to Age/Richard Mullins) is a perfect example. The song sounds like it could have been placed on the soundtrack of Fame.
“In a Little While” (from Age to Age/Amy Grant, Gary Chapman, Brown Bannister, and Shane Keister) is a disturbing song in this vein that implores the flock to endure the small aggravations of life; never fear, paradise is coming right after death. Grant gets a traffic ticket coming home and has to deal with junk mail and “what a day it has been.” She gets a letter from fellow Chistrian soldier and realizes “in a little while we’ll be with the father, home forever.” The song innocently dismisses real suffering and denies the God-given Now.
“We’re just here to learn to love him/we’ll be home in a little while…
Reaching toward the lamp for light/picking up the Word I find
Days like these are just a test of our will….
I can almost see the top of the hill.”
Grant would not know this at this time, but beyond the top of that hill, she would soon find more, even bigger hills.
Unguarded – 1985
“Find a Way” was written by Amy Grant and soon-to-be Christian megastar Michael W. Smith.
“Love will find a way (How do you know?)
Love will find a way (How can you see?)”
Those quiet, almost subliminal, questions in the chorus serve to challenge Grant, who retorts with passion, singing that one must learn to live with a faith in positive outcomes. She acknowledges that there are questions that cannot be answered. She dismisses them.
“I know this life is a strange thing.
I can’t answer all the whys
Tragedy always finds me.
Taken again by surprise.
I could stand here an angry young woman…"
(but)
"We’ve got to move on.
Love will find a way…
I know it’s hard to see the past and still believe
Love is gonna find a way”
Overall, I was glad my Christian friend pushed this Unguarded unsolicited on me. Along with the guitars and new lite-rock sound, you can feel some sort of new enthusiasm in Amy Grant voice that was almost contagious. Grant songs here are less about praising God and seeking praise from God. By now she was writing self-help for us. She was speaking now to the human struggle, albeit in a very lite, Christian-pop sort of way. And I found it helpful. "I know it's hard to see the past and believe."
We do get direct Jesus references in “Love of Another Kind” (Wayne Kirkpatrick, Amy Grant, Gary Chapman, Richard Mullins); but because the song speaks to human issues, not Christian issues, it’s easy to do a translation on these references. The ‘love’ in this case can be interpreted not simply as Jesus’ love, but a joyful love of the world, a meaningful fellowship. There is also a theme in the song common to Amy Grant material: the duality of elements. The idea that what causes pain also causes love. The two are opposites but also one. Love is cruel and fragile but also ultimately healing.
“I Love You” (Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Dann Huff) is an interesting study in the type of love songs Grant sang while married to Gary Chapman (an innocent love) and the later love songs she would sing while married to Vince Gill (love after the experience of a complicated divorce). The earlier lyrics are about working through problems and doubts, with lines like:
"Life is very hard
Life can be so hard"
Although there’s no real conviction of experience there yet. In the meantime, she tries to work through the spirituality of her marriage:
“Oh, to stay your princess
If I only could
If you never saw the rotten
Only saw the good"
"You’d still be prince charming
But we would never know
How it’s in the darkest times
True love finally grows
Come on true love grow."
"Sometimes it takes a little working through…”
Her latest album, The Me That Remains, has a more experienced take on this "love takes work" theme.
“Stepping In Your Shoes” (Chris Eaton, Amy Grant) is a throwback to earlier Grant material, full of be-good platitudes.
”Work hard in school
Learn the good rule
Try to make good for you."
Unchecked ambition is still acceptable within the Christian ethic (and prosperity Christianity is not even a big thing yet), which puts the “try to make good for you” directive in conflict with “learn the good rule.”
The songs “Fight” (Amy Grant, Dann Huff, Gary Chapman) and “Who To Listen To” (Gary Chapman, Tim Marsh, Mark Wright) are either condescending and preachy or hyperbolic:
“There’s a battle raging inside of me
It’s a holy struggle and it won’t let go of me”
“Wise Up” (Wayne Kirkpatrick and Billy Simon) again touches on the need for getting wise to things.
“It’s gonna get rough
So you better wise up.”
“Sharayah” (Chris Eaton, Amy Grant) is full-throttle conversion-intervention to a childhood friend.
“He loves you.
He wants you to come home….
I don’t want to push you.
I don’t want to lose you now.”
But not all the material in this album proselytes so much. One of my favorite Amy Grant songs, or pop songs for that matter, is the final track on the album, “The Prodigal (I’ll Be Waiting)” (Amy Grant, Gary Chapman, and Robbie Buchanan). On its surface, the song is an internal monologue by the father in the biblical parable about the prodigal son.
However, the lyric is open enough to be read as a love story that transcends separation, or possibly even past lives, depending upon what you believe in.
“I face the day again
Against the windowpane.
I remain your closest friend
And wish you back again…
But still the days drag on
Why did you decide to go?
Did you only need to see
What only time can show?”
One line of the song strikes me as so figuratively beautiful because it’s a line that resonates both literally in the song (a father who writes this letter to his lost son), but generally and personally (we write to communicate our humanity or simply to break through to a lost loved one): “If only you could see this pen scribbling down my heart.”
And I’ll never get over the heartbreak I feel every time I hear it. It speaks of the yearning to be heard, but what you cannot manage to say due to fear or an insurmountable distance. Scribbling is both a passionate flourish of a word and yet it describes something painfully sacrificial across a heart.
Lead Me On - 1988
On this album Grant focuses more on love songs, but she still continues to question how a spiritual person should behave and grow under a Christian standard.
At the album’s best, Grant’s voice lacks the self-righteousness of previous albums and takes on a tone of real spiritual seeking. “Lead Me On” (Amt Grant, Michael W. Smith, Wayne Kirkpatrick) references the Holocaust and how people persevere. On another level, it seems to speak about deliverance and seeking with a very musical confidence and surrender which also works for other genres of spiritual enlightenment.
“Shadows” by (Karen Peris, Don Peris, Amy Grant) is a non-illuminating metaphor about sinfulness. “Saved by Love” (Amy Grant, Chris Smith, Justin Peters) is a narrative about love of family, but trite like a Norman Rockwell painting, ultimately lacking any layer of profound reality. Its platitudes feel synthetic.
Ironically, it’s the Jimmy Webb cover on the album, “If These Walls Could Speak,” that eloquently and in fine musical detail does the pro-family work “Saved By Love” fails to do. Lovely song.
Grant’s narratives up to now tend to be weak and cliched. She does much better with piercing imagery and her ability to capture the elusive questioning nature of humanity and the struggle to heal and find the positive. Grant is fabulous with heart concepts and life encouragement. There she is believable.
“Faithless Heart” (Amy Grant, and Michael W. Smith) draws on the same questions as “I Love You” above. It deals with the struggle for faithfulness in relationships. Human weakness and love’s boundaries are possibly more fluid than Grant believes yet or that Christian institutions allow. Grant instead sees herself as weak and flawed. In the song she begs for fortitude and implores herself to honor
“The promise a stronger heart once made…
Tell me that the fighting inside will pass.”
Once again, she brings up a topic that begs contemplation: does the idea of pure faithfulness lead to jealousy, possession and manipulation? Is love so limited? Anyone who has ever loved and lost and loved again knows, from the experience of being divorced and re-married for example, that a profoundly true love can go beyond the bounds of one one person, marriage or institution, that a profound love does not end, even as you take on others to love; and that this is ultimately a good and life-affirming thing. This song sounds the a relationship trying desperately not to unravel.
By including the Kye Fleming/Janis Ian song “What About the Love” Grant acknowledges false righteous Christian institutions, including tithes, denying your body and having to submit to be worthy.
But then the songs “All Right” (Amy Grant, Dann Huff, Phil Naish) and “Wait for the Healing” (Amy Grant, Wayne Kirkpatrick, Gary Chapman, Jerry McPhearson) pick right back up with Christian platitudes.
“It’s all we can do to wait for the healing…"
"Hungry hearted reason coming of age
Running headlong into the latest rage.”
Is this the old familiar Christian distrust of reason we’re hearing? Isn’t it usually passion that runs headlong into the latest rage? Down at the local shopping mall, I think I see passion with fashion all the time but never reason. Is that me trying to use reason again?
But then the album ends on two love songs I love: “Sure Enough” (Wayne Kirkpatrick, Mike Brignardello, Shane Keister) and “Say Once More” (Amy Grant, Gardner Cole).
“Sure Enough” is worth mentioning because it’s sweet and also because of the lyric about sticking together, “We’re doing what a modern world said that we could not do” (which sadly illustrates how modern life’s real complications will soon thwart Amy Grant). The line practically temps Experience like a bowling ball into the neatly placed, simplistic pins of innocence. The song also brings up the popular early Grant theme of blissful wisdom ahead:
“Even when our love is mellow and aging
Even when we’re old and wise.”
This is a theme she will give up by the time of Behind the Eyes and Simple Things. Wisdom turned out to be awfully elusive. But remarkably, we don’t hold Grant’s ignorance against her here primarily because she sings with such a lack of self-righteousness. She sings the lines with the sound of serious hope and self-encouragement, not a careless arrogance. There’s also a touch of melancholy in her innocence. (Or maybe Vince Gill doesn't need these kinds of reassurance?)
Heart in Motion - 1991
Between Lead Me On and Heart in Motion, Grant released an album called Moment in Time in 1989 and had a hit pop-duet with Peter Cetera, “Next Time I Fall.”
Next time? What if there is no next time? There would be but it would fall with Vince Gill and not Peter Cetera.
Heart in Motion would turn out to be her first full-length crossover pop album.
Few songs on this album deal directly with Christian images or directives directly. This is why sites like Allmusicguide thought the album was popular...because Grant was “not beating listeners over the head with her beliefs.”
The only song that overtly refers to Jesus is the last song, “Hope Set High” (Amy Grant). The hopeful joyous melody is refreshing but the lines:
“When it all comes down
If there’s anything that happens in life
It’s from Jesus”
hearken back to the exclusionary, absolute Christian platitudes of days of yore. But its pretty catchy though.
Grant had embarked on motherhood by this time and the album reflects what appears to be a joyful time. Her voice is confident and most of the songs speak of contented love with little struggle.
Quaint love songs include “Good for Me” (Tom Snow, Jay Gruska, Amy Grant, Wayne Kirkpatrick), a song about how opposites attract (“You get brave when I get shy”) and there's a dated but effective Mario Andrette reference.
And “Baby Baby” (Amy Grant, Keith Thomas), a song that does double duty as a love song and a new mother song. The line “ever since the day you put my heart in motion” recalls a recurring image in Grant songs of the heart being ignited from a state of lying dormant.
“Every Heartbeat” (Amy Grant, Wayne Kirkpatrick, Charlie Peacock) is better. There are a few lines that are reminiscent of concepts in earlier Grant love songs, a couple’s common spirituality, the need to be wise, relationship perseverance, a “classic case of boy meets girl/moving in the same direction.” She then makes the humble declarative, “I’m simple but I’m no fool” and describes this love as “a love that’s well designed for passing the test of time.”
Sadly all of these realities, although somewhat more guarded than the platitudes of earlier lyrics, are still headed for disarray by the late 1990s. We are all simply more foolish than we realize; and because we’re not always eternally moving in the same direction, relationships can fall apart.
“I Will Remember You” (Amy Grant, Gary Chapman, Keith Thomas) speaks to that more fluid love of relationships past. There are arresting lines here which refrain from being overly sentimental.
Long after we are no longer together, I will not only remember you, but: "I’ll be your champion and you will be mine." Here is a love that speaks to reality, bittersweet and believable. You need never stop loving those whom you once loved (hopefully, if you do it right). There’s a melancholy positively to this song which shows progression from her earlier songs about love.
“That’s What Love is For” (Michael Omartian, Mark Muller, Amy Grant), attempts to be an encouraging song of inspiration (and many were inspired enough to make it a hit), but many lines are still too vague and cliched. “Living through the fire,” love can “help us through it” by its ability to “melt our defenses/round off the edges/talk us down from the ledges/give us strength to try once more.”
The song lacks the tight construction and powerful moments of other Amy Grant self-help songs.
Later in the album, “You’re Not Alone” (Dennis Morgan, Simon Climie, Rob Fisher) does a better job with the same idea and a simpler structure, which lets the striking lines stand out more. "You're not a fallen soldier. You can't just lay down and die." The song also contains the recurring duality of elements theme: “Love can soothe what love has burned.” In fact the duality of elements is highly explored in this album, the duality of fire and water, and therefore love.
“How Can We See That Far” (Amy Grant, Tom Hemby) explores this idea even more poetically and is one of my favorite Amy Grant songs. It speaks about doubt and relationships again but instead of just re-affirming her love in the face that doubt, she uses the metaphors of dualities to explain it. Although the verse narratives are again clichéd – a couples timeline of marriage and childbirth – the chorus is pretty unforgettable,
“The same sun that melts the wax can harden clay,
The same rain that drowns the rat will grow the hay
And the mighty wind that knocks us down
If we lean into it
Will drive our fears away.”
There is profound hope to be found here because they deal with the natural order of a dualistic universe. And maybe dualities that make sense in nature make sense in the heart.
She admits, she cannot predict the outcomes of her relationship (which seems like a first) despite her fortitude and it takes real courage to say “I cannot think that far.”
This is spirituality that incorporates physical matter and an honest acceptance of doubt.
The other stand-out song on the album is the before-mentioned “Ask Me” (Amy Grant, Tom Hemby), a song about incest. When I first heart the song, I knew Grant was doing something beyond frivolous. Grant, in her liner notes, explained that this song was about a friend who went through the ordeal of incest. The lyrics are simply terrifying as she describes the experience through they eyes of a child:
“I see her as a little girl hiding in her room
She takes another bath and she sprays her mother’s perfume
Tries to wipe away the scent he left behind
But it haunts her mind…"
"She’s his little rag….
And he’s mopping up his need"
"Maybe she’ll find her way through these awful years
To disappear.”
Then she describes the perspective from the viewpoint of a traumatized adult woman:
“She keeps the light burning in the hall
Acting quiet as a mouse
Deep inside she’s listening
For the creeping in the house.”
However, the woman comes to feel “she’s finally safe and sound/there’s a peace she has found.”
The chorus is sung with bold defiance against religious doubt,
“Ask me if I think there’s a God up in the heavens
Where did he go in the middle of her shame?
Ask me if I think there’s a God up in the heavens
I see no mercy
And no one down here’s naming names.
Nobody’s naming names.”
Grant in full of conviction in these "Ask Me" choruses. And although there’s no explicit answer to the question ‘is there a God up in the heavens’, Grant alludes vaguely to a “mercy in the middle” of all the pain. It’s really her passionate singing during the chorus that implies the answer. You don’t need Grant to explicitly say that if this woman can survive incest to find spirituality, there must be a God who exists either in the mercy of her inner strength or a God who actively aids in her healing.
Now I don’t know about other Christian songs, but this in not the type of material one would hear on VH1 or MTV or pop/rock radio in 1991 and that’s because writing a song like this takes courage, and not bravado.
Behind the Eyes – 1997
In 1994, Amy Grant released her next album House of Love, which included the duet with Vince Gill, “House of Love." The album contained no exceptional lyrical contemplation. It was entirely unremarkable except for the almost then-unnoticed entrance of Vince Gill into the heart of Amy Grant.
By the time Behind the Eyes was released in 1997 (and maybe due to the aforementioned "House of Love" duet), Grant was going through hard times in her marriage to Gary Chapman. This album marks a real change in sentiment for Grant and this album, along with Simple Things, breaks with simple platitudes and deals directly with the often complicated spiritual scenarios Grant (and every one of us) have had to face in our lives. The material is full of personal questioning and conflict. At times it’s downright depressing. It’s almost as if she were morphing from innocence to experience right before our very eyes.
She begins to question whether we will ever be old and wise? Love is often a quagmire of pain, the suffering of being torn apart and loving the wrong people at the wrong time. Even the music has changed to a melancholy, contemplative, spiritual-sounding acoustic music. The cover art is even somber, not the smiling, pretty, joyful Grant portraits we have come to see.
She admits confusion, regret, suffering and a lack of understanding. There is no “love will find a way” here. In fact, love seems to have wrecked the way.
Grant is also working more closely with Wayne Kirkpatrick on material, including the song that received the most airplay, “Takes a Little Time” (Amy Grant Wayne Kirkpatrick) which was a subdued reversal of “love will find a way.” This is Kirkpatrick and Grant at their best, a song with interesting and compact metaphors,
“It takes a little time sometimes
To get the Titanic turned back around…
Baby you’re not going down –
It takes more than you got right now.”
Unlike earlier songs that seek outside guidance from God, this song implies you have to do work on your own to change your negative circumstances. It reinforces the work as opposed to talk. “We’ve been talking and you know what…I’m sick of this talk.”
Another line from the song I've come to love over the years: "You can name a thing a thousand times. It won't make it go away." Some tough love.
“Cry a River” (Amy Grant, Wayne Kirkpatrick) revisits earlier discussions about faithfulness and a wrong love at the wrong time. Again, without any of us knowing the particulars of her personal life at the time, this song was poignantly situated at the end of her first marriage and appears to be personal.
“Who know love would walk through my door
Turn a light on somewhere deep inside.
It was a long wait
Just the wrong time.”
Her performance is filled with sadness as she implores herself to cry a river and flood the sea. “How do you argue with a feeling deep in your bones?" Platitudes just don’t help you with those bone feelings.
“Some things you live with
And you never let it show.
I hope you’ll think of me
When tender winds blow
Sit on the shores of love
And just let it go.”
Grant in this song decides to soldier on. I wonder if “just let it go” means she let herself love in secret or if she ties to let love slip away.
In “Turn this World Around” (Keith Thomas, Amy Grant and Beverly Darnall) Grant is in pain and entirely not sure about things anymore.
“Who can track the path of time
Not you and me
The twisting road we call our lives
We cannot see
The hunger and the longing everyone of us
Knows inside
Could be the bridge between us if we try”
The song is filled with maybes. Maybe someday we could “face our fears/reach out through our tears/and turn this whole world around.”
“Curious Thing” (Amy Grant, Wayne Kirkpatrick) illustrates through narrative examples, which have improved by now, how strange life is and how it can give you what you least expect. Grant is again expressing surprise and admitting her lack of understanding.
“Every Road” (Amy Grant, Wayne Kirkpatrick) deals with struggles in relationships and the language has changed to take in the new perils of her personal life.
“Every road that’s traveled teaches something new
and every road that’s narrow, pushes us to choose."
"It’s a dance it’s a balance
Holding on and letting go.”
“Missing You” (Amy Grant) has a “you can’t always get what you want” heartache. She is trying to accept the painful realities that won't go away. There are no happy endings in lines like “missing you is just a part of living” and “I’m living out the life that I’ve been given.” A lot of resignation in this song. (I love the telephone jangling line and sound.) This song has much more meaning to me now than in did back in 1997.
“The Feeling I Had” (Amy Grant) alludes to infidelity and weakness once again, here with admitted weariness, Grant throws up her hands and resigns herself to a fate she never saw coming with lines like
“I cannot take the heat
This girl’s goin home…"
"I’m just a little weary of
All the talk and all the buzz"
"I guess I’m letting go.”
The following is another one of Grant’s lines that has stuck with me over time, a line about the frailty of hope against harsh realities: “I’m tired of stitching up my dreams with this thread of hope.”
Although she’s “still a believer of twin hearts and timeless love,” she admits that every choice available can be hard to manage. (Oy vay. I feel this.) Then she introduces a new theme in her work, that on the other side (of life or of pain and difficulty), she will look for her battered compadres, the ones she has loved and lost,
“The road of life is rugged
Any road you choose
And when I find the other side
I’ll look for you.”
There’s a very sad bridge in the middle of all this acoustic intimacy. She then talks with cynicism about the futility of words,
“A million things I never said
Didn’t even try
Cause words are cheap and sometimes cruel
And stuff you hear is seldom true.”
Cynicism of this kind almost feels like an epiphany of sorts in Grant songs. It's a great song.
“Somewhere Down the Road” (Amy Grant, Wayne Kirkpatrick) further explores more questioning, going from dismissing the ‘whys’ in 1985's “Find a Way” to lamenting them:
“So much pain and no good reason why
The one thing that you held so dear is slipping from your hands
Why, why, why
Does it go this way?”
Without the answers, she appears to feel helpless, wondering if comprehension will only come later in an afterlife. This song contains one of the few direct references on the album to God.
“Somewhere down the road
They’ll be answers to the questions..."
"You will find Mighty arms reaching for you.
And they will hold the answers
At the end of the road.”
Back in the song “In a Little While” back in 1982, Grant remarked “I can almost see the top of the hill.” Now she admits “I thought I’d climbed the highest wall/The learning never ends.”
Although paradise may exist in the afterlife, there are real dilemmas and heartaches to be resolved now. Maybe Grant fears she is faced with unsolvable questions when she says, “All I know to do is to keep on walking” which sounds downright spiritually Eastern.
In 1999, Grant and Gary Chapman, her husband of 16 years and father of her three children, divorced. In 2000 it was revealed that Grant and Vince Gill were to marry. Once again, Grant came under fire from Christian fans. Christian radio stations banned her songs and allegedly some Christian retail outlets refused to stock her albums. Grant and Gill gave birth to a daughter a year later, six years after their “House of Love” duet.
Turmoil surrounding the new blended family and the events of 9/11 encouraged the completion of her next album.
Simple Things - 2003
After all the turmoil of her love life and the darkness of her last album, Grant’s soul searching produces a light at the end of the tunnel. Grant refocuses on her new life’s spirituality and we see what her heart looks like after all the dust has settled. She comes up with something practically spiritually Eastern: Simple Things with its themes of forgiveness and emotional recovery.
She had been through something.
The album begins with a song called “Happy” (Amy Grant, Lamar, McPherson), an unabashed love song about the joys of making someone else feel happy. This is the song with the line I kept repeating it in my head for days upon days, the mantra that led me to rethink how I was responding to people when things get simultaneously intellectually and emotionally charged.
“I want to look behind your eyes
And gently brush the hair back from your face
Cos baby I just realized
That seeing you there in that light
It’s better to be kind than right.”
“It’s better to be kind than right.” That was the line. As a person who has spent a pathetically large amount of effort through the years in a pointless attempt to prove I was smart enough, like Hermione Granger in Harry Potter straining to keep her her hand over her head in order to prove she wasn't dumb. To hear this line was to hear that maybe the obsessive need to be thought of as right wasn’t so smart or good after all.
It was both sobering and liberating. And Grant is ready to take stock in her past,
“I’m ready to dig in
Ready for more than skin on skin
I’ve made some big mistakes
Adios to foolish pride.”
In “Eye to Eye” (Amy Grant, Keith Thomas) Grant works to try to repair damaged relationships. You can read this song as an interpersonal call for reconciliation or as some culture-to-culture outreach post-9/11, some “eye for an eye” reference. Again, Grant addresses the duality of elements.
“I’d like to figure out where we stand
Before darkness falls
The sun that’s shining down on my face
Is shining down on you"
"And the fruit that gives me strength to live
Is giving strength to you, too.”
Grant references "our children" and this could refer to her own children with Gary Chapman and their post-divorce disputes or the world’s children and seeking a peaceful alternative to war.
The title track “Simple Things” (Amy Grant, O’Brian, Owsley, Keith Thomas) speaks directly to the enjoyment of a spiritual present and the divinity of small things. A bird’s song reminds her of the song “Unchained Melody” and she references “the miracle of forgiving,” a point that may pertain to recent events in her life and acknowledging both self-forgiveness and a divine forgiveness.
“Paint the picture, baby,
Where you wanna be
Take a walk, take a ride
So far, you and I
Don’t need a plan.”
No spiritual plan. How deceptively simple and ultimately true.
One of my favorite songs on the album would be “Out in the Open” (Eaton, Amy Grant) because it gently and wonderfully coaxes souls out of self-doubt and seclusion through an act of sublime self and spiritual forgiveness.
“They were the sweetest words I’d ever heard
My heart could barely take it in”
She admits that this world is,
“A tangled web of woven,
I don’t know all the reasons”
(but that)
“I’m still alive and reaching out
And I can feel the healing”
She sings “come on out, come on out, come on out” as if to a frightened animal or child, reassuring the tentative soul,
“There is no jury
There is no judge
Ready and waiting
Are the steady arms of love.”
Grant relinquishes being a judge herself and dismisses the other judges.
“I Don’t Know Why” (Amy Grant, Wayne Kirkpatrick) revisits the quest to understand the painful ‘whys’ of life with a Buddhist’s surrendering. The song was written around 9/11.
“This is one of those moments
When all that really matters is crystal clear…"
"We are woven together.."
"Stripped of all our layers, getting to the core…"
"I don’t know why
I don’t know how
I don’t know where
All I know is now.”
Grant is firmly planted in the moment. She is no longer looking for wisdom (over time she’s just found more ‘whys’ anyway) or paradise down the road.
“I’m here between the bookends of everything that was and what will be
There’s a wealth of information
But not so many answers
It seems to me"
"So I face the unfamiliar
And nothing is clear
Only blinding faith can carry me from here"
"Life is always changing
This I know.”
“Looking For You” (Amy Grant, Keith Thomas) is a sweet song dealing with the discovery of true love, but also works like similar Christian/secular switch-outs. You can view the song about looking for God or for true love. Interestingly this song sounds much more believable than the prior, more quaint-sounding love songs of her past. "Beautiful" is another lovely song and my favorite of all the Grant/Gill duets.
Likewise, “Touch” (Amy Grant, McPherson, O’Brian) is remarkably carnal beneath the weak metaphor of star-burning passion. I appreciate the water references in the heat of the moment. Cool that thing down!
“Hold onto water
Hold to the tide"
“Innocence Lost” (Hemby) references human failings of choice (you cannot undo what you have done), and the heartbreak of disappearing illusions. It mourns the loss of innocence with “there’s no way to know all the harm this world can bring.”
It’s formally references God and her desire, through God, to be forgiven and to be pure again. It also reminds us that Grant still holds to the idea of eventual redemption from a Christian Father.
“In spite of my innocence lost
In his eyes I’m a newborn child
Cos I accept his love.”
In “After the Fire” (Amy Grant), Grant again revisits the idea of getting to the other side (although she’s not calling it ‘home forever with the heavenly Father’ anymore) and looking for lost loved ones on the other side.
“After the fire is over, after the ashes cool,
After the smoke is blown away, stillness finds you,
Growing, knowing comes at quite a price
After your time of wandering along this lonely road
I will be here for you…"
"On the other side, I’ll look for you.”
Grant has come up on the other side in many ways, through struggle to a place with a broader spirituality and renewed hope, beyond the empty platitudes of ‘you better wise up.’
For are we ever really any wiser?
Which is an interesting question I asked back in 2003. My own life has changed significantly since then. I am literally and figuratively not living in the same place. I am 23 years older and feeling unique in my elderliness in that I don't hate it. I was telling some friends this just the other night. I feel way less confused than I used to in my pre-50s and I'm more comfortable in my own skin. But I have come to find most people don't feel this way. I think this has to do with how their identities are structured: they value wisdom much less than they value the value our culture places on youth.
That's the good news for me. The bad news is the last few years have been devastating. Heartbreak upon heartbreak in all areas of my life: from my day job to chronic fatigue to my love tangles to my writing work (my whole writing identity pulled out from under by A.I. which is not simply loss of work or the fact that people are more-than-willing to bypass the real labor of art but also the broliarchs who feel writing and art are the first and easiest things to replace) to the loss of my mother (in some sense really both parents) to the decimation of my country's moral compass (and the moral decline of people I love) and then the nightmarish news of Rape University last month which was the recent piece of devastation (that trust is a chimera) which is every reason why I started this blog so full of my own anger and disappointment.
Whew. And although I want to visit the rage of women here, the first few women artists I've highlighted are hardly rageful women singers.
If I had to describe the way my soul feels right now, (in the vein of Sting's "King of Pain," one of his best songs, one packed with stunning similes and in all-the-ways a spiritual song), I would describe my soul now as an empty sack that has been robbed and pillaged.
And this is why there's a need for Amy Grants as much as the need for female screamers.
Because on some days I'm even too tired to be angry. And although I'm not looking for a father-figure God to carry me to bed (although that was a nice memory of my very human Dad doing that), I am looking for some small thread of light.
Legacy... Hymns and Faith (2002)
Amy Grant returned to Christian music in 2002 right before Simple Things. Primarily this album is comprised of traditional hymns. There are also two songs that include Vince Gill as a songwriter but only one song with Grant's name on it, "What You Already Own," a beautiful song that again creates a liminal space between divine and earthly love. This is a song full of humility and honesty.
"I give you my heart broken and bruised
But still beating strong and wanting to trust you
I know I'm unfaithful
I know I do wrong
Do you protect what you already own?"
"I give you my life
Precious and rare
Knowing wherever I've been, you were there
Sometimes I'm faithful
Sometimes I'm strong
Will you protect what you already own?"
Rock of Ages... Hymns and Faith (2005)
These are mostly contemporary Christian songs written by others. There's another Vince Gill duet, "Rock of Ages." Grant's name is on two songs. One is "Carry You" (Grant).
Much more bittersweet than the 1980s material, not just the lyrics but the tone of the song.
"Jesus Loves Me/They'll Know We Are Christians/Helping Hand" (Bradbury, Darnall, Grant, McGuire, Scholtes, Sims, Warner)
"They'll know that we are Christians
By our love by our love"
Oof! We'll address that later. But the line is so catchy.
"We've all seen trouble from time to time
There's a mountain ahead
I've got no strength to climb, hey
If you're feeling strong
Reach out to me
I hope this journey won't take long
But won't' you please have mercy"
"What can I do today"
"I'm talking about the soul all alone
Needing the daily bread
Someplace to lay his head, yeah
And I'm talking about the neighbor on your street..
"Everybody needs a helping out
If that aint what it's all about"
Christianity her is an expression of love and action. Saying that again. It is love and action. This is not prosperity Christianity. This seems like somewhat of a controversial Christian statement looking back from 2026.
Somewhere Down the Road (2010)
Grant started to revisit older material here. Two songs are from Behind the Eyes. One song is from Age to Age and one from a 2002 album Legacy... Hymns and Faith. There are also seven new songs by Grant.
"Better Than a Hallelujah" (Sarah Hart, Chapin Hartford) is another great song about how dirty realities are better than those clean platitudes and the song speaks more to lived spiritual experiences.
"God loves a lullaby..."
"God loves the drunkard's cry
The soldier's plea not to let him die
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes"
"Beautiful, the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah"
"Better than a church bell ringing
Better than a choir singing out, singing out"
"Overnight" features her daughter Sarah Chapman (Amy Grant, Natalie Hemby, Luke Laird, Audrey Spillman) and is another one of my favorites off this album, a song about having faith in your life's trajectory. (The only irony being Amy Grant released her first album at age 16.) And yes, that's auto-tune in the chorus.
"Unafraid" (Grant, Kirkpatrick) - is a very nice song.
"Love could make
Love can make
Love will make
Make you unafraid"
"Third World Woman" (Grant, Chris Eaton) tries to understand her own privilege and to encourage putting yourself in other people's shoes and worries.
"Find What You're Looking For" (Grant, Mindy Smith) is a song about kindness in judgement and not looking for the worst in other people.
"... there is so much good in the worst of us.
So much bad in the best of us.
It never makes sense for any of us to criticize the rest of us.
We will just find what we are lookin' for."
"And haven't we all had to learn life lessons are fallin' and fallin' down hard.
If we are looking for somebody failures, we won't have to look far"
"Come Into My World" (Grant) is a very unusual Amy Grant song, written either from her own perspective or trying to understand someone else who feels unreachable.
"I can not find the doorway
It's overgrown with vines that twist and curl
If you are brave, then come into my world"
"And now I'm buried in the walls and no one comes to call but you"
"There'll be no other invitationNot another sound, another wordNothing more than you've already heardPlease be brave and come into my world"
Wow.
How Mercy Looks From Here (2013)
This album has lots of duets: Vince Gill, Carole King and James Taylor. And Grant's songwriting hand is in most all of it.
"If I Could See (What the Angels See)" (Altman, Grant)
"If I could see
If I could hear
If I could know
There's nothing to fear
If I could stand
If I could see
Maybe that's finally eternity"
"Better Not to Know" features Vince Gill (Altman, Bose, Grant, Morgan). This is kind of my attitude about fortune telling. You gotta be brave with the not-knowing.
"But nothing ventured, nothing gained
The risk of living is the pain
And what will be will be anyway
Oh, it's better not to know
The way it's gonna go
What will die and what will grow.
Goodbye more than hello
It's better not to know"
"Those tiny stems became these treesWith dirt and stormAnd sun and air to breatheLike you and me."
"Don't Try So Hard" features James Taylor (Glover, Grant) and is telling us not to overwork for the purpose of earning love from God. (I kind of think some of us should be trying harder, actually). But point taken. Calm down Type A People Pleasers!
"Here" (Altman, Grant, Reed) is a song about God in nature and yourself in nature.
"Shovel in Hand" featuring Will Hoge (Grant) is a song trying to understand the cruel death of young people. She does a great job with a harsh and personal subject.
"I watched my son - shovel in handGo from bulletproof boy to a full-grown manThe cool dark dirt on the casket landsNineteen years old and he's buryin' a friend"
"Oh, goodbye two boys, hello one man"
"Oh, goodbye two boys,Oh, goodbye two boys,Oh, goodbye my boys"
"Golden" (Altman, Eaton, Grant) is a hang-in-there song.
"In this world full of voices
Screaming in your ear
Only in the quiet will you hear
You are loved, you are golden
And the circle won't be broken"
"Our Time Is Now" features Carole King (Altman, Foreman, Grant) and is about living in the moment. "Sing before our time runs out."
"Not Giving Up" (Altman, Grant, Laird, Reed) is a check on negative thinking. Again, she says you are going to find what you think you will find (and not what's really there).
"What you're looking for, you'll find
It happens every time"
I'm not giving up,
Not giving up on you
You can say you've had enough
But I won't stop calling,
I'm not giving up,
Not giving up on you
Not giving up on you"
"When your fragile heart is breaking
And your confidence is shaken
I can tell you that we've all been there before
The first step is hard to take
But it's a choice you gotta make
When life is waiting through that open door"
"I wish that you could see
the way you look to me."
Oooh, I got emotional there.
"How Mercy Looks from Here" (Grant, Paslay) has kind of ambiguous lyrics but basically is about facing fears.
"When you face your greatest fear
Losing all that you hold near
Open up your eyes my dear
My dear
That's when boundless grace appears
Unseen angels hover near
Sages singing loud and clear
Oh how mercy looks from here"
"Greet the Day" (Grant, Morgan) is a great song about mind-set and going forward with good faith, like really good faith.
"Lead me to the ones I needAnd to the one who's needing me.I won't assume the worst is true,And do the best that I can do.A word of kindness, I believe,Is heard throughout eternity..."
"Hello sunshineHello rainGlad to see you,Either way"
"I won't assume the worst is true,"
"Faith" (Grant, Altman, Keb' Mo') feels like another challenge to Fundamentalist Prosperity Christianity.
"I tell you the truth, you are looking for MeNot because you saw miraculous signsBut because you ate the loaves and had your fill"
"Faith is being sure of what we hope for
Certain of what we do not see
Faith is being sure of what we hope for
And anyone is welcome to believe
Anyone is welcome to believe
Anyone is welcome"
"Threaten Me with Heaven" (Gill, Grant, O'Doherty, Owsley) Ooh. Pretty sweet meditation on the fear of separation and meeting again on the other side of things.
"You're searching for the answers you can't find
All in good time
What's the worst thing that could happen?
If they say my time is through
Can they take away the love
Or the years I've shared with you?
What's the worst thing that could happen?
What's the worst that they can do?"
The Me That Remains (2026)
This album was produced by Mac McAnally who I only know by this kind of obscure hit I liked as a kid (which I kind of think is tongue-in-cheek), "Minimum Love."
"The 6th Of January (Yasgur's Farm)" (Sandy Lawrence) is full of great lines alluding to what happened in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, (I was taking care of my parents and we watched it live on TV), which seemed like a watershed moment when far-right Republicans showed us they were willing to trash all their ideals of Christianity and Democracy to prevent Joe Biden from taking office as President. This song says those ideals have been "scattered all to Hell and Harper's Ferry." And Yasgur's Farm references the Baby Boomer ideals of Woodstock.
"Hey, mister, where’s the road to Yasgur’s farm?
He stares at me with pity and alarm
Says that crowd left here long ago
Scattered all to hell and Harper’s Ferry
On the 6th of January"
The lyrics reference John Lennon's "Imagine" and Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin On."
"Is it right on red or left on MLK?
I look ahead and realize we’ve lost our way"
And in the video Amy Grant looks right at the camera when she sings "we've lost out way."
Pity and alarm. Wow. I knew it was an important song the first time I heard it.
"How Do We Get There From Here" features Ruby Amanfu (Grant, Amanfu) This is another great song and video asking what do we do now? How to we repair? Their voices sound great together.
"You could hardly hear the questions
For the shouting in the room
There are no easy answers
And it's hard to break through
All the things they each believe in
Have drawn these battle lines
But could any of this fighting
Be worth these children's lives"
"Every station every paper
Has another hard headline
So we hang the colored ribbons
For the loss of more lives
When the ink dries on our story
What will history reveal
Will we have been part of the problem
Or a part of how we heal"
Well, considering very bad and greedy people are out there working every day to try to prevent any unity and repair, this will be a challenge. I sincerely hope songs like this help.
"Please Don't Make Me Beg" (Grant, Foreman) is a song that starts out as a personal appeal to another person:
"Please don't make me beg
For your time and your attention
And the thoughts inside your head
Oh, please don't make me beg
Please don't make me beg
The meeting of our minds
The touching of our skin
We both have different ways
To let each other in"
...and then broadens out to the idea of feeling generosity for strangers:
"There's a man down on the corner
Guitar case at his feet
Oh, please don't make him beg
Singing out his gladness
And doing it for free
Oh, please don't make him beg
It's such a simple choice
To share the things we have
He's got an angel voice
It's money that he lacks"
...which then broadens out to a biblical context:
"Said the Son to the Father
Must I drink from this cup
Please don't make me beg
Then let my death be their redemption
Every single one
Oh, please don't make me beg
That man changed everything
When He was lifted up
Can't you hear Him saying
'Just don't run from love'"
"We want the same thing...to be loved."
"The Saint" (Grant, Smith) is a song about having sympathy for people who have lost their way and their appeals being seen while suffering from drug addiction. The song ends abruptly with this:
"Stripped of everything covered in grace
Maybe the addicts are really the saints."
My jaw literally dropped at that idea. You might not think this is brave songwriting from the vantage of your social circle but considering the fact that Grant has been trolled many times by people in her own religious circle of Christians, this is very brave and beautiful thing to say.
"Beautiful Lone Companion" (Grant, Reid) Another God in nature/God in the garden song. Calm and meditative with a gesture here to the contradictions.
"And He keeps to the mountains and the valleys
He sleeps by the rivers and the streams
He dwells at the edges of the shadows
To water your life and deepest dreams
And He moves through ancient contradictions
With the grace of a sacred machine
This beautiful lone companion
No one's ever seen"
"We strut and rage a fretted hour....
Break these chains of lust and power"
From your lips to God's ears.
"The Me That Remains" (Grant, McAnally) is very autobiographical, about aging and her near-death bicycle accident.
"I barely can remember looking for a change
A whole lot of a little too much was always in my way
And whatever angels happened to draw my name
I hope they see how proud I am to be the me that remains"
Mac McAnally also wrote "(Nothing Like A) Sunny Day," a reggae song about an inclusive kind of spirituality.
"All religion, every nationality
So much in common, but we tend to disagree
It's so disturbing"
"Til We Get It Right" (Grant, Jones) is a great song about considering the problems of love from a business perspective, with research and development and iterations.
"The Other Side of Goodbye" featuring Sarah Cannon and Corrina Gill (Grant, Douglas) is a song about her mother's crossing over. I just had a mother's passing myself and although my mother's face didn't light up like Grant's mother's apparently did, something amazing did happen to make me believe there was someone waiting for her on the other side.
There are plenty of Christians still mad at Amy Grant for all the things. And they are likely looking for those old, empty platitudes and absolutes, concepts which aren't helping most of us who are living in the real world. They are looking for songs that invoke God but do not challenge us to look into our hearts over God. For all their lip-service to humility, they seem to have none and they will not realize that moments of doubt not righteousness is what makes faith more meaningful. And Amy Grant hits this complexity like nobody else I've ever heard.
Amy Grant may never have intended for her music to attract such non-Christian spiritual seekers as myself. But I also suspect some of these 1980s Christian fans have returned, like the rest of us living through these confusing and heartbreaking times, people who find certain tentative messages comforting in these strange times of extremism, both libertine selfishness and religious zealotry.
It’s nice to see a spiritual soul working through the puzzle in a time when sincere questioning is under attack from all political directions, someone who is unafraid to stand in the thickets of her own judgements and disillusions. Even when Amy Grant was going through changes that made her question her prior attitudes and commitments, she stayed the course and never stopped writing about her soul.
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