She has sold millions of records, but until May you'd have been hard pressed to find any of her nine albums in a commercial record store. She has developed a huge following, performing before 500,000 people last year alone, yet her concerts are seldom advertised to the general public. She's won three Grammies and a flock of Doves, but she's still virtually unknown to the record-buying masses.
Unlike Iglesias, who built his initial following in his native Spain and Europe, Amy Grant has done it right in the American heartland. She is the biggest star in the burgeoning field of contemporary Christian music. Her positive pop celebrates God and the Christian life, an old message in a new medium. Powered by electric guitars and synthesizers, inspired by Top 40 radio, it is decidedly closer to '80s rock than to gospel. It's also attractive to millions of music fans, particularly teen-agers and young married couples who are turned off by mainstream rock's sexual obsessions.
Grant, now 25, has acquired many nicknames since she started recording nine years ago: the sweetheart of gospel; the Michael Jackson of Christian music; and briefly, but no longer, the Madonna of contemporary gospel.
She laughs at the last title, insisting it has nothing to do with the fact that she is an attractive young woman with a penchant for leopard-skin jackets, designer jeans and barefoot performances, or the fact that she is projecting a confusingly sexy image for an avowedly spiritual singer. ''You just do what you do,'' she protests. ''We haven't tried to arrive at any image. I mean, I don't want to be earthy if earthy is 1975 and here we are in 1985.''
Here in 1985, Amy Grant is suddenly reaching out to a wider public, bridging the often troubled waters between sacred and secular music. She has signed with A & M Records, a deal that puts her for the first time into the pop mainstream, both on the retail level and in terms of radio exposure. Already her new album, Unguarded, has broken onto the Adult Contemporary charts.
''I am really striving as an artist to be relevant and to communicate,'' she says. ''I don't want to cling to the past. You become a musical has-been if you keep trying to make the music what it used to be.''
Before the A & M deal, Grant managed to rack up impressive sales without the benefit of pop radio airplay or distribution outside the limited network of Christian record outlets. Her last album, Straight Ahead, spent a year atop the inspirational charts; its predecessor, Age to Age, spent three years on the charts. Those albums are quite different from earlier efforts, which reflected Grant's origins as a folkish singer so nervous and intimidated by the studio that she recorded much of her first album in the dark.
Now she tours in grand rock style -- Silver Eagle buses, tractor trailers jammed with 20 tons of lighting and sound equipment, a seven-piece band that includes her husband, songwriter-guitarist Gary Chapman.
On the verge of becoming Christian pop's first platinum artist (she was its first gold solo artist), Grant is paying some dues for her spin in the limelight. A recent Rolling Stone piece portrayed her as a tough-talking, no- nonsense fundamentalist who is every bit as ambitious as the real Madonna, goes to Prince concerts (she doesn't enjoy the simulated masturbation) and frolics naked on secluded African beaches.
''They made me sound a lot edgier than I feel,'' Grant says. ''And I was quoted in a pretty colorful phrase at the beginning of the article when I was actually quoting someone else. It was out of context. But I felt like they were appealing to their clientele, and they approached me the way they approach a lot of artists. They're a gutsy magazine, they're liberal, they're going to pursue the things that give them their edge.''
The beach incident occurred during a vacation, she explains, and involved a woman companion. ''We threw off our clothes. Nobody was there, nobody saw us. It was such a free, wonderful, childlike experience. It was great. But then it can also be worded as 'let's get naked.' '' Such tidbits are fodder for fundamentalists who criticize Grant's worldly sound and appearances, although she says she ''would never do anything that I thought would be offensive. I'm just trying to live my life the best way I can.''
The flip side is that despite her pop trappings, commercial radio programmers have considered Grant too Christian. She is not pushy about her convictions, but she is clear about her values. It has put her in a cultural nether world that she is now escaping.
''I've never had an album that was released mainstream,'' she says. ''They were always geared to a particular sector of America. I'm just pleased to have the attention. Unguarded may not ever be Top 40, but I feel I've gotten so much support, especially from the church. Kids are calling radio stations, saying, 'That was gutsy of you to play that Amy Grant song.' ''Who ever thought that playing a song about God or Christian values would be an act of courage? . . . Part of it is that radio stations feel they'll lose their edge if they associate with something good.''
Even when that something good features a voice akin to early Olivia Newton-John and Karen Carpenter, cloaked in new-wave-ish arrangements that could slip comfortably into rotation between Cyndi Lauper and Journey cuts. ''I would never have thought I'd fall for a voice like Cyndi Lauper,'' Grant says. ''Ten years ago, in the face of Carole King, I'd have thought, why's she squawking? Now it's incredible, it's great. You hear something enough and you start to like it. It's like developing a taste for wine or fancy cheese. I want to grow, and I feel that musically America is the hottest place.''
Unguarded is less overt than its predecessors: there's no mistaking Grant's intentions, but words like ''God,'' ''Jesus'' and ''Lord'' don't pop up like they used to. There's even a love song to her husband. ''If I found 10 songs about loving your husband or parents or being a good friend, I'd do them,'' Grant says. ''I just want to sing songs that contain truth about life.''
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