Such a devoted following might have turned the head of a more affected perfomer - especially now that Amy Grant's popularity is beginning to seep into the ranks of popular pop music. Last Christmas she performed at a ceremony for President and Nancy Reagan; on the nationally televised tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., a month later, she was singing and dancing center stage between the established megastars Stevie Wonder and Eddle Murphy. Big names and lots of accolades have come her way in the past year, but that's not half of what this charmer is all about. "A couple of months ago my husband and I moved to a farm," Grant says in a soft voice kissed with a warm Southern twang. "And I'd have to rate that right up there with singing for the President."
Barely old enough to remember Elvis and still young enough to disturb neighborhood peace by blasting her stereo at full volume, she already possesses the rare combination of talent and vision that makes superstars. By blending the instincts of a rock-'n'-roller with a Sunday-school sensibility, Grant has become the hottest star in contemporary Christian music. As of this writing, she has won five Dove Awards from the Gospel Music Association and four Grammys; her ninth album, "Unguarded," has sold more than one million copies. "I'm not at all bashful or shy about the fact that I try to put some pretty heavy content into my songs," she says. "My songs are meant to encourage a healthy life and spirit."
At first meeting, Grant rocks like a young lady awash in homespun values and strict morals. She's bright, polite, and fun. A tide of curls cascades down her back, and a big smile framed by a light shade of lipstick creases her face. Although she's already 25 and married, she could pass for a high-school senior who would probably have to fight off a deluge of invitations to the next big dance. In fact, Amy Grant likes to joke and party. She is not, as rumored, a party pooper in cheerleader disguise. "I have this huge stick-in-the-mud reputation, and it's not fair or true," Grant says. "Yuck!"
She is perched on the side of a bed in a Los Angeles hotel room. The splash of a hotel guest diving into the swimming pool echoes as a radio newscast reports a Midwestern snowstom. On a brief break from her current tour, Grant is in town for this evening's American Music Awards telecast. Talking long-distance to her husband, Gary Chapman, 27, who's working with a band in Quebec, Grant speaks like an excited teenager on the phone with her boyfriend. She gushes about how she's presenting an award with Julian Lennon, John Lennon's son, and then complains that in the company of such a flashy and faishon-conscious crowd she is not comfortable with her dress. "My outfit isn't cool at all," she protests. "It's, well, it's kind of just polite."
Grant believes that the songs she and her songwriter husband put out can appeal to both Christian and pop audiences. She worries that "Chritian singer" is a label that turns people off before they even play a record. "I feel a lot of people, when they hear anything to do with God, put a wall up and nobody wants that," she says. Though Grant would like a mainstream following, with increased radio play, the facts of the music business make that task a difficult one - gospel accounts for only roughly 5 percent of the annual sales of records and tapes. That's why, when a stranger asks Grant what she does for a living, she simply says, "I sing." Sensitive about the issue, she adds: "I'd much rather sing a song than say a word that locks in a preconceived idea. But once you do something long enough, labels don't seem to matter."
Much of Grant's popularity stems from her wholesome, down-home nature, her accessibility, and her utter lack of pretension, and not just from her ability to put an infectious back beat to religion. Surely, though, that doesn't hurt. Onstage, she fronts a tight, seven-piece band, including Chapman on bass and three backup singers, in a rousing show nearly two hours long. Hardly stoic in the spotlight, Grant sometimes dances as if she were on a bed of red-hot coals. And midway through, each show receives special treatment. The lights go down, the band disappears, and Grant sits down at the edge of the stage to talk a spell about life. "I don't ever try to be preachy," she explains. "But I think sometimes when you're onstage, people feel you must really have it all together. And for me, it's important that sometime in the concert I admit we're pretty much all hanging on seemingly by a thread, just because we don't know what life is going to deal to us."
Such folksy wisdom is at the root of Grant's nature. She was born in Augusta, Georgia, the youngest of four daughters in a well-heeled family. When she was six months old, her family moved to Nashville, where her father practices radiology and oncology. Religion was always an accepted part of family life, never something forced. "As I recall, we went to church every time the door was opened," Grant says, laughing. "But it was always such a thrill when Sunday afternoon grew late and all the kids were playing outside and mom would say, 'Amy, I think we're not going to church tonight.' I loved it."
Always something of a rebel, perhaps because she grew up the baby of the family, Grant possessed an insatiable curiosity. She recalls matter-of-fact bedside talks with her mother about pregnancy and about smoking marijuana (which she has never done), and the casual way she first began to read the Bible. "I guess I came of age where I just thought I wanted to figure out where my life was going," she explains. "It was no big deal, just a time of searching."
But before religion, there was music in her life. She began playing piano in the third grade; she then switched to guitar during high school at Harpeth Hall, an all-girls school in Nashville, where songwriting came to her as naturally as some girls find nail polish. Grant didn't set out to become a gospel singer, though. "What got me writing is I had songs in my repertoire for everything but my spiritual experience, the good and the struggle it brought into my life," she says. "Then what happened is, I made a tape for my parents of all the songs I'd written, which coincidentally all had some Christian implication, struggle or vulnerability, and spiritual resolve. And without my knowing, someone sent it to a Christian record company in Texas."
Grant was 15 when she signed her first contract with Word Records, Christian music's largest record label. Though she had never even sung in church, Grant was, all of a sudden, a gospel singer. "I'd never even heard of contemporary Christian music," she says, laughing. "Suddenly I felt this whole mantle of preconceived notions lowered on to my shoulders. I was definitely a normal kid who loved to go to parties, and suddenly I was traveling around the country with this huge reputation as a Christian singer. It was a heavy responsibility, because part of being young is just trying to figure out who you are."
Grant met her husband, then a struggling guitarist pitching songs to Nashville record companies, when Gary submitted a song to her through the mail. Just 17, she recorded the tune. It was the first one of his songs anyone had ever cut. "I was extremely happy I was going to be able to pay the rent," Chapman recalls. "And then when I met her, like all guys, I was immediately taken with her as a girl . I felt, the heck with the song - I want to get to know her. Married now for four years, they spend most of the year on the road, making the time at home all that more precious.
"Amy's real family oriented," Chapman says. "Her family doesn't seem to notice the success. When we're home, sitting around the table or barbecuing, she's got to get up and do the dishes just like everyone else."
Their new place, outside Nashville, is called Riverstone Farm. The 200-plus- acre spread provides refuge not only to Mr. and Mrs. Gary Chapman but also to some horses, a pig, and two dogs. Relaxation to Grant means riding horses and trudging her tired bones to exercise class ("I hate it but I go") or just sitting on the porch with a good book. And somewhere in the future is a brood of kids. "I can't see trying to juggle concerts and car pools right now," she says.
Amy is "frustratingly kind," says her husband. "It's amazing. She treats everyone like they want to be treated, which I'm not always capablc of doing. And she's extremely dedicated. When I first met Amy, her aspirations were to live life, have babies, and just be happy. She didn't have any designs on becoming a big star, and she still doesn't. We're not too goal oriented. It seems like there's too much to do right now to think about the future."
What's remarkable is Grant's ability to keep her life in perspective. Even as she good-naturedly spews forth biographical details, the saccharine quality of her story compels Grant into a cute, almost apologetic explanation. "I'm a very normal person," she says. "I struggle with all the normal, everyday things. But I also live life with a really deeply embedded sense of hope - probably because I truly believe that God is who He said He was and that He's acted in my life."
As proof of her struggles with the same temptations that plague everyone, Grant offers a piece of paper on which she scribbled several stanzas of a new song. "I love my husband, but there's no way for a wonderfully handsome man to walk by and not feel your heart pound," she says. The song is called "Faithless Heart," and in a mellifluous a cappelia rendition, Grant sings: "Oh you crazy heart, I'm holding on to you/Left up to yourself you'd pull this girl in two/And every day this life tries harder to undo/the home I keep, the man I love, find the heart that's true/Faithless heart, be far away from me . . . ."
Though the music seems to flow from her like water from a fountain, Grant feels that songwriting and performing are difficult crafts. "The nature of what I do means that every night I have to reach down to the depths of the passion of my being just to have something to give to people," she says. "You can't go out there and fake it." Pulling music from the heart and performing it with emotion takes its toll. "I don't know if I'll be doing this when I'm 4O.. but I might," Grant adds. "Only most women do not have real long music careers. There are other demands, like family, and I don't think you can do both. So I don't see that I have loads of time left."
In the meantime, Grant plans to continue touring, releasing new albums, and working hard to continue her very polite crusade to entertain and to inspire people. "Up onstage I feel like I try to convey my life," she explains. "What people take away is up to them. Still, I wouldn't be telling the truth if I didn't say that I would hope people coming away from my concert would feel wonderfully refreshed, high on life - maybe even that their life has changed a little."
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