Defending The Indefensible: Amy Grant

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

But Led Zeppelin's In Through The Out Door did it first, right?

Anyway, I guess Unguarded is the album I meant above when I mistakingly said Lead Me On was in that store with two different covered cassettes.

There's a song from her very first album called "Old Man's Rubble" that, for whatever reason, wasn't featured on The Collection. You should obtain it one way or another, even if the rest of the debut is kind of blah.

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

This really should be posted, despite the brief mentions years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbVtwRrX1hE

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.

― tipsy mothra, Tuesday, July 22, 2008 6:08 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the Gary Lutz story of my dreams

― J0hn D., Tuesday, July 22, 2008 6:11 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I have to say, I peaked here

man though I'm listening to "Baby Baby" right now - who knows whether this is a single performance or a lot of punch-in & tape edits but wow, what a performance it is in the final mix - she occasionally does a sort of too-lost-in-the-song-to-enunciate-fully move (esp. @ "baby baby in any kind of weather" et seq.) which is pretty uncharacteristic of both her genre & her usual style, and consequently when she does put it into play it's incredibly effective; she communicates ecstasy, abandon, the conflation of the spiritual and the physical. I still prefer "Every Heartbeat" as a song, but "Baby Baby" is something of a master class in pop single-making.

ok yup it's AG listening party in the hotel now

SING YOUR PRAISE TO THE LORD COME ON EVERYBODY STAND UP AND SING ONE MORE HALLELUJAH

oh am I gonna go with "Doubly Good to You" next? you had better believe it

remembering you tonight Rich Mullins, one of the best who ever lived

ok this is my last post on the amy grant thread til dinner all right

there's a video for "better than a hallelujah" now and here it is. it's great but 1) why do country videos gotta always be making the old people in 'em suffer? like, really suffer? weird emotional porn impulse 2) if any track on that song ever existed on actual tape, as the video suggest, I would be extremely surprised

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm5kx3xqmg0

I still prefer "Every Heartbeat" as a song, but "Baby Baby" is something of a master class in pop single-making.

Yeah, there's every reason for me to hate its emphatic synth hook but her performance and lyric are charming instead of gormless.

Besides the fat synth bass (which was wiped from the single remix), "Every Heartbeat" boasts the great couplet, "No exception to the rule/I'm simple but I'm no fool."

THYYYY WORD IS A LAMP UNTO MY FEET AND A LIIIIIGHT UNTO MY PATH

You know she's doing a bunch of dates this year w/Michael W. Smith, right?

yeah I do!

i've listened to "1974" about ten times today

i've listened to "baby baby" about ten times today

i love this thread

Every Heartbeat is a jam

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..."