Grant's music sounds just like standard, soft pop-rock. It's just that she sings about God rather than romance. Imagine a Karen Carpenter or Carole King ballad with religious instead of romantic lyrics and you'll have a good idea of what the average Grant song sounds like.
In gospel, a market that accounts for 5 percent of total record and tape sales, Grant is a phenomenon. No other contemporary singer of Christian songs sells as well. Gold albums (500,000 copies sold) are rare in gospel and were the exclusive province of groups until Grant came along. Last year, she became the first solo gospel performer to get a gold album - for her excellent 'Age to Age' LP. Grant's strength is primarily in the Midwest and the South, where she normally plays 3,000-to 6,000-seat halls before audiences in the 15-35 age range.
Grant is becoming so popular that she may soon be too big for the small gospel market. Some people are already suspicious of her, figuring she's using contemporary Christian music as a stepping-stone to the pop mainstream. Grant had a curt reply for these skeptics:
'I don't want to be a pop singer. There's quite a lot I want to do in gospel. I'd like to keep working in this minority music until a lot more people know about it. At this point there aren't that many people who know who I am. I want them to find out who I am, but I want them to know me as a contemporary Christian singer.'
But this doesn't mean that Grant, who has turned down offers to record for pop labels, is indifferent to pop acceptance. She'd love to have her records, now played mostly on gospel stations, get pop airplay. In fact, her label, Word Records - the biggest in the gospel genre - has hired independent promoters to convince pop stations to play her records. They've won over some smaller stations but most, figuring their listeners don't want to hear religious music of any kind, still aren't interested.
'I'd like to be in the pop mainstream with the music I'm singing, but that may be impossible,' she said. 'But I'm still going to keep trying.'
Though Grant has been having trouble reaching pop fans via radio, she's still hoping to lure them to her concerts, which, she stressed, are not revival meetings. 'I'm a singer, not a preacher,' she said. 'I'm not looking to convert anybody. I feel people come to hear my music, not to hear me talk.'
The daughter of a doctor, Grant was born in Augusta, Ga., and raised in Nashville, Tenn. But she wasn't raised on gospel. Her exposure to religious music was limited to singing hymns in church. 'I grew up in a Christian household,' she recalled. 'We went to church (Church of Christ). I was religious, but nothing excessive. I was a real normal kid.'
But when Grant was almost 15, something happened that changed her life. She developed a crush on her Bible-studies teacher. 'He was quite a few years older than I was,' she said. 'He was leading a Bible-study group of kids my age. He told me to come to Bible study one night. I went hoping he would fall in love with me.'
Though that schoolgirl crush innocently ran its course, Grant did get something lasting from that class. 'I saw all these kids who were really into God,' she said. 'They were talking about God like he was a person, as if they were really communicating with him. I had never come across anything that made so much sense. It was the best thing I'd found in my 15 years of life.'
Grant vigorously embraced Christianity just before she started to compose. Though she had no exposure to any form of gospel, she started singing and writing. 'I tried to write music to express what I was feeling,' she said. 'I wanted to articulate this new-found relationship with God and what was happening in my life. My personality was changing. Old bad habits were crumbling away.
'I wanted to communicate this through music and the only way I knew how to do it was through music I was listening to. I was into pop music, people like Bette Midler, Todd Rundgren, Carole King, James Taylor and Jethro Tull. I couldn't express myself through traditional gospel because I hadn't heard any gospel stations. I really didn't know that music existed.'WHAT IS AMY GRANT really like? Is she, as many assume, a stiff, pious conservative? Not really, she insisted.
In fact, Grant said she spends a lot of time trying to erase that image, which, she contended, is woefully stereotypic. 'I'm a Christian, so people naturally think I'm a certain way,' she said. 'It's sad what our society has done to Christians. A lot of non-Christians have this one vision of Christians and assume I and every other Christian is dull and boring and conservative. They feel they can't relate to us.'
While certainly not trying to paint a picture of herself as a bawdy swinger, Grant made the point that she's not a stuffy, inflexible bore either. 'I like to have a good time,' she insisted. 'I have a sense of humor. I'm not a stick-in-the-mud. I will say there are some views that I hold that are conservative. Like I'm not comfortable with the notion of free sex. Yet I do enjoy a great sex life with my husband' (guitarist-songwriter Gary Chapman, who does his own set in her show).
But Grant, her caution flaring up, didn't want to rap the conservative Christian image too strongly: 'I love to dance, but there are people who listen to my music who are uncomfortale with dancing,' she explained. 'I have to think about them. I'm not going to say too often that I like a cold beer while watching a football game. That might bother some of my fans, too. I'm trying to reach so many people that expressing certain personal opinions can be a barrier.'
Grant didn't belabor the point. She indicated that she'd already said more than she should have. 'I think I'd better shut up,' she said.
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