Defending The Indefensible: Amy Grant

she was the all-time favorite of my freshman-year roommate. he was a 2nd-gen korean-american lacrosse player, super christian. his family would come visit on weekends and i'd wake up hungover in my underwear to a room full of immaculately dressed, extremely polite koreans getting ready for church. yoo-sang brought like 10 cassettes to college with him, and half of them were amy grant. i guess they were ok, i don't know. i only let him use my stereo when i wasn't there.

the Gary Lutz story of my dreams

I want to read what Scott thought of the "Baby Baby" 12".

baby baby will forever make her worthwile

Her last pre-crossover album, "Lead Me On," is really, really good.

Her last pre-crossover album, "Lead Me On," is really, really good.

some of the touring she's doing right now is in celebration of the anniversary of this outstanding album

tons of the crossover stuff is great too tho & "Legacy: Hymns & Faith" is just awesome

would blap

Holy cow that album is 20 years old = I am old. :(

It's long past time for one of our contemporary R&B chanteuses to cover "Every Heartbeat." That song is positively Motown-esque.

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/CCM/amy_grant-occult.jpg

best website ever?
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/CCM/amy_grant-exposed.htm

Amy’s album House of Love includes the environmental-mother-earth song, “Big Yellow Taxi,” by new-age-priestess Joni Mitchell (Ibid.). Mitchell is infamous for her open relationship with a spirit she calls “Art.” Obviously she is communing with demons, and it is unconscionable for Amy Grant to be promoting Mitchell’s music to Christian young people.

Lead Me On really is the most wonderful record. but recently made available digitally & missing from the box set, who knows why, is Never Alone, her third album -- which is outstanding. it's in the earlier style (before the grain got into her voice, v. young-sounding A.G. as on My Father's Eyes & Age to Age), which is so light & hopeful & wonderful - so much warmth in it. The arrangements do a neat eliding of 70s production styles (which I view as "narrative" but that's a whole thing) and the oncoming 80s bells-and-whistles style -- you can sort of hear how people who'd learned to engineer in a 70s environment were thinking things would go. Which, in CCM, they did - this stuff makes a huge impact on a whole genre, really sets a tone (along with Michael W. Smith records, obviously).

Important also, individual song on a Rich Mullins tribute: AG's version of "Nothing is Beyond You" is A+++ all-time top-ten.

I love this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2wrtoloJ6k

oh man that is my deal right there

that first big chord change in the first verse...sublime. and when she gets to "I'll be your champion, and you will be mine"...she is so so great I will never get enough she should make a new album every other month.

coworker on 'baby baby' just now: "that big hit she had in the 90s ... kind of a new jack swing kind of a thing"

i dunno. i can hear that there's value here but i feel kind of awkward listening to it. like i haven't put enough distance between myself and my (RC) upbringing to manage to critically listen to CCM stuff at all. so er back to listening to spoon i guess /:

Crappy audio but great song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HKE0BxQN6Y

this was the tour I saw her on!

she has a new song btw, song of the year easy, it autoloads here:

http://www.amygrant.com/newsite.html

ok, i'm making my way through this stuff. i see the appeal, though i find myself liking the pre-crossover stuff better than the big-time early-90s stuff. although the more dunderhead fundie lyrics really defeat me.

she has a gorgeous reading of jim webb's "if these walls could speak."

that song is indestructible. i can imagine a version erring on the side of the gloppy, but even glen campbell's late-'80s version is pretty solid. why hasn't more been written about this phenomenal song? why haven't more covered it?

I've met Amy Grant in person a couple of times. She's really pretty & very nice.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_iE0ZfK3uSUo/SW-vB2qoIkI/AAAAAAAAADE/ux3WH1lG-5w/s320/Amy+Grant+-+Age+to+Age.jpg

wow

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lFUC53mC8Cg/SOKFdFudYaI/AAAAAAAAA1s/T0H4nKd7ddM/s320/Amy+Grant+-+Age+to+Age.jpg

songs to hear from Simple Things: "Out in the Open" and "Beautiful," both of which are devastating

Don't know that I'd ever think to describe Amy Grant as "devastating" but that's ILM for you.

http://lindsey.jp/smilies/id-hit-it.gif

Sad news -- Will Owsley, Grant's touring guitarist and a solo musician in his own right, took his own life. She's issued a brief statement.

what terrible news.

she has a gorgeous reading of jim webb's "if these walls could speak."

that song is indestructible. i can imagine a version erring on the side of the gloppy, but even glen campbell's late-'80s version is pretty solid. why hasn't more been written about this phenomenal song? why haven't more covered it?

A.G. rendition of this was the only standing between me & total despair at one point in my life a couple years back - that whole album is incredible

I'm listening to Heart in Motion for the first time since maybe age 4. Just hit "Ask Me." Holy shit.

From the lyric booklet: "This song is about a girlfriend of mine. If you or someone you love has been a victim of sexual abuse, please don't be afraid to seek help."

This is the hardest time I've ever had getting through an incredibly effective pop song.

So, maybe I should go back and read this thread (and other threads, and other things), but what are supposed to be the best of Amy's Christian/pre-Heart In Motion albums? Like, is Lead Me On (which may be considered borderline secular already) any good? Just picked up a cassette of her 1986 best-of The Collection for 25 cents two days ago, and am liking it a lot so far. Does that mean I should pick up the other, non-best-of 25-cent '80s tapes I saw? Or am I basically all set now?

Lead Me On is one of my favorite albums of all time, but then again, you and I have been known to have very different tastes. It's the one right before Heart in Motion. "1974" + "Saved By Love" and her cover of Jimmy Webb's "If These Walls Could Speak" and the title track are all A+. Earlier, I'm fond of Age to Age - it's sort of the last of her very-young voice, when her voice had a real clarity to it that gives way to something slightly huskier later on. I'm also super-fond of Never Alone, which she seems to have disowned; it's very early, but it's really, really good. There's a live album from around then that's pretty great, too.

But importantly, have you looked into her later stuff? Because I feel like you might really dig Simple Things and Behind the Eyes.

J0hn, how's the new album/comp., Somewhere Down the Road? Noticed the AMG review mentioned "slight traces of Auto-Tune on Amy’s vocals" (really?? O_O) and I kinda stopped there and failed to investigate any further.

Thanks a ton, John! And yeah, sounds like I have a lot of catching up to do, in both directions. Stopped paying attention a couple albums after House In Motion (seems like it's been forever since I got any new promos by her in the mail, too, weird), but I'll definitely be on the lookout now. And will definitely go back and pick up any of the 25 cent cassettes you just named. (Think they had Lead Me On with two different album covers, btw! What's up with that?)

(Ha, just conflated Heart In Motion and "House Of Love," I think -- oops.)

J0hn, how's the new album/comp., Somewhere Down the Road? Noticed the AMG review mentioned "slight traces of Auto-Tune on Amy’s vocals" (really?? O_O) and I kinda stopped there and failed to investigate any further.

The single from Somewhere is fantastic. The rest of the album is patchy. You don't notice the auto-tune without headphones, but you sure do notice it once the headphones are on, and it ruined the album for me. Her pitch is fine; auto-tune is for people who can't really sing in my opinion. Autotune & melodyne sound like shit unless they're done in such a way that you can't notice them. (Super-obvious-call-yr-attention-to-it autotune is so dated & horrible now that it's a little shocking to me anybody can still stand it.) She is ill-served by modern recording trends, and would do well to accept that. I would give heaven & earth for her to do an American Recordings style album; she can play guitar quite well & her voice is great all by itself. I saw her open with a solo "My Father's Eyes" two years ago; it was completely awesome.

Also the new album doesn't have "The Same Thing/Please Don't Make Me Beg" that she played on the Lead Me On 20 tour which was like such an amazing song, so bummed about that.

like seriously somebody let me executive produce an Amy Grant record and I will deliver the album of the year

please let me do this

Not sure the Sparrow executives are reading ILM, you may want to send them a direct-mailed letter or something. ;-)

Grow a big, burly beard and be the Rick Rubin of CCM.

an American Recordings style album

Have a feeling I'd avoid this one like the plague, fwiw. (Nothing against Amy, or John; just can't think of any American Recordings style albums I've ever liked, by anybody. I fall asleep just thinking about it. But like John said, we have been known to have different tastes.)

The Cash ones were hit and miss, sure, but they definitely had high points.
The Neil Diamond one was a mistake, no two ways about it.

The Neil Diamond one was a mistake, no two ways about it.

^ Fixed!

Neil Diamond gets a lifetime pass for writing "I'm A Believer"

Neil Diamond was never in need of a stripped-down, rustic sound. Half of what makes him him is the pomp of it all.

those songs sucked, is the problem. i'd listen to tape of him doing his good tunes with just a guitar on a stool or whatever, but those songs were not that good.

goole otm - the record sounded great & so did his voice but the songs were lame. I saw A.G. open with "My Father's Eyes" by herself: she can really play! "my father's eyes" is picked not strummed but here she is strumming away

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqRbSzpBL1o

& oh my God this song...this SONG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI6pME9P2ek

Neil Diamond gets a lifetime pass for writing "I'm A Believer"

― people are for loving (HI DERE), Monday, August 9, 2010 6:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

But that led to this so pass rescinded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUyu5prWjTE

interesting point of eschatology: posting that abomination in a lovely amy grant thread will get you such a talking-to on judgement day

But that led to this so pass rescinded.

So by far my favorite songs on The Collection (which runs in roughly reverse chronological order) are the relatively slick and sparkly, '80s pop-new-wavey-produced stuff at the beginning -- "Stay For Awhile," "Love Can Do" (both dated 1986 -- previously unreleased before this album I gather -- and written with Michael W. Smith and Wayne Kirkpatrick), "Everywhere I Go," and "Angels" (both dated 1984, from Unguarded). You can definitely hear her already transitioning toward Heart In Motion with those; their lyrics seem to be inching toward the secular, too. The rest is okay, for the most part ("El Shaddai" is one sort of weird standout), but not nearly so engaging or fun to me. Which makes me think I should pick up Unguarded and Lead Me On if I see them cheap, but maybe avoid her earlier, less popwise (and less huskily sung, as John says) stuff.

I never realized Unguarded was released with 4 covers. Take that, Arcade Fire!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c2/W_cover_Unguarded.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/db/O_cover_Unguarded.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/R_cover_Unguarded.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/D_cover_Unguarded.jpg

Suddenly inspired to watch the Kenney Center Honors. (I'll fast forward thru the U2 segment.)

Then you'll miss the Bono-Amy duet on "Every Heartbeat."

Far more likely he takes a verse on "El Shaddai"

"Next Time I Fall", with a cameo from Peter Cetera who comes onstage and promptly beats him to death

does Vince Gill replace the Edge

Still have a very vivid memory from the one year I was forced to join a youth group and attending one Friday night meeting where three girls in the group tearfully yanked the tape from the spools of their Amy Grant cassettes and dramatically threw them in the garbage for "going secular".

I'm glad it hurt them personally

ever since the day
you threw my tape in trashcan

In the "Rednecks and Bluenecks" book Rodney Crowell talks about how Vince Gill's values were actually pretty liberal but that he identified as a Republican because they were the Jesus team.

I legit liked "Everywhere I Go" and "Wise Up." Strong songs. I am not religious or Christian at all but those are solid pieces of music.

three girls in the group tearfully yanked the tape from the spools of their Amy Grant cassettes and dramatically threw them in the garbage for "going secular"

It's what Jesus would have wantd.

*wanted

*wanded

Eric's simple, but he's no fool.

Alfred's a wonderful counselor, a lord of life, lord of Soto

https://i.imgur.com/FIdmzrn.gif

Fat Baby is an awesome song

[Outro]
He's just a fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat
Fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat
Fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat
Baby

"He's just a faaa...
He's just a fat little baby!
Wa, wa, waaaaa..."