Amy Grant - Intimate Portrait

she really took Christian music out of a little niche market and made it more mainstream but her venture into pop music caused controversy she caught a lot of grief for making a pop record after spending so many years in making Christian is the jury that she made from Christian into pop music was incredible unbelievable and almost impossible off stage Aimee suffered as she faced the end of a 17-year marriage you have no idea the pain that she's been through or what she's been through and it's been hard on everybody I just felt like I was really doing the unspeakable and at the same time feeling like I was coming back to life a new marriage to country star Vince Gill and a new baby have brought Amy to the happiest place she has known if you ever meet Amy you're always taking fire beauty she's a really great person to be around her music is broken sales records and stereotypes but Amy Grant still struggles with the success and fame that have come her way I always believed in the experience of what music could bring to me singing and to people this thing but it's it's never really been about the famous part she's been called a preacher and a pop star but the only thing she's ever cared about is singing the truth about faith life and herself this is lifetimes intimate portrait of Amy Grant lifetime's intimate portrait posted by meredith vieira question what happens when to country music superstars meet and fall in love well if they happen to be Amy Grant and Vince Gill you get a picture-perfect wedding a whole lot of happy kids and some of the most beautiful duets you'll ever hear so this week on our series married to a star we celebrate Amy and Vince they were criticized for their decision to be together but they were true to their love they figured out how to raise a family under the glare of not one but two spotlights and as you're about to find out staying true to herself and her beliefs is what this remarkable singer's life is all about this is her story her words amy grant is the most successful contemporary Christian recording artist ever but religion was never all that she wanted to sing about what's so balanced about a human being is that they are spirit and soul and body all those things and to only engage a conversation about your spiritual life after a while starts to feel like a squeaky wheel but no Christian singer had ever crossed over into mainstream music and when Amy wanted to there was resistance on both sides first when her religious music began playing on pop stations I think there was less resistance in the secular side as it was in the Christian side I remember she did a show in Detroit she got a dozen roses handed to her and in there was a note you open the notices turn back now before it's too late there was controversy again when she began singing pop songs a lot of people are like going man I think you've crossed you've crossed the line here you just can't do this Amy strength to weather the controversy and remain true to herself began in her childhood she was born in 1960 and grew up in Nashville Tennessee the youngest of four daughters to dr. Burton grant a radiologist and his wife Gloria the grants were a church-going family and Amy went often with her parents and sisters Cathy Mimi and Carol went to church every Sunday morning every Sunday night every Wednesday night and like many children amy was happy to have the occasional reprieve I remember it was the rare Sunday afternoon that mom would come out and she'd say you know your father's a little bit tired I don't think we're gonna go to church tonight I think oh there is a God thank you I can stay home and play the one thing about church that Amy does remember from her childhood was the music I don't remember any sermon that I heard as a child but we sang the same hymns over and over again and that's really I'm sure what shaped my theology which sing around our our table our breakfast table there was saying Church songs will just be in the kitchen and somebody will start him or can you name this hymn during her young childhood Amy attended a Christian school but when she was about 10 years old her parents put her in a prestigious private girls school called Harpeth hall we were in uniforms all girls everybody had greasy hair no mic nobody cares she liked going and not feeling like she had to put on makeup and not have to wash her hair for six days which she's famous for as unappealing as that sounds it's very freeing and you made friends on the basis of people you had things in common with it was just a great environment to be yourself and to not be afraid to try new things it was at Harpeth hall that amy took her first songwriting class and began to play the guitar and though she loved to sing music was still just a hobby for Amy you know I went to girls school with girls that sang a lot better than I did but I just I just loved being a part of music Amy's interest in music began to grow more when she was about 14 years old and started attending a new church with her sisters unlike the traditional congregation she had grown up in Belmont Church on Music Row in Nashville was celebrating the free spirit of the early 1970s with song it was just a great church for young people with a lot of music it really influenced Amy everybody was you know blue jeans barefoot people had flowers in their hair and they sat up in the window sills and you're just picking your way through the crowd you couldn't even see an aisle and everybody's got their arms around each other and singing songs and all of a sudden you've got this event happening in Nashville that is a wonderful spiritual enlightening time that's happening right down there Music Row I remember a prostitute coming in and giving her testimony and she said will preacher I take my clothes off for a living can I go to this church and he said ma'am you give your heart to Jesus he'll tell you what you can and can't do that's not my call of course you're welcome here it was then in her early teens while worshipping and singing at Belmont church that Amy had her own spiritual awakening this very possible to grow up in church and it's really just a cultural experience and we all have cultural experiences and some of them are religious and some are not I had read this book on my bedside table the Bible for years and years and the connect was that all of a sudden I went I believe Amy began writing songs to express her newfound faith and sharing the songs with her youth group at Belmont church I think the reason I wrote songs about my faith was I was just trying to round out the repertoire of life and I had fabulous falling in love songs fabulous celebrating life songs or cry your heart out kind of stuff but nobody was writing songs about faith I just remember her always wanting to write songs I remember particularly going to the beach we were I was 16 she was 15 and she took her guitar and kept saying what's let's write a song let's write a song and I kept saying let's go find boys you're such a nerd when Amy told her mother that she and a friend were going to sing for their classmates at Harpeth Hall mrs. grant decided she should hear the songs before her daughter performed at school I said would you like to sing hymn for daddy and me first and and she said yeah well she came downstairs with the guitar and we sat in the library and she played inside some bass and I said there was just tears in 1975 amy was 15 years old a teenager in high school singing songs for her schoolmates in church group she had no designs on a career in music I wasn't one of those kids that ever you know had the toilet plunger that was to pretend microphone and I stood on the laundry basket or sang into my hairbrush I never did that it wasn't even a me but a friend from Belmont Church Brown Bannister who had the idea to make a tape of Amy songs I said you know maybe we need to just go in and and just put some songs down for your mom and dad so we went to Belmont college we will use their studio and just put down a really rough really rough tape of those songs I think there was one copy maybe two and I gave it to my mom and dad and you know I'd be upstairs doing something and they have friends over and I hear that tape and I think oh gosh they've got another captive they've locked them in the in the sitting here and they're playing that tape those poor people that's how I felt about it next Amy gets a phone call that changes her life I got grounded for the phone call and it's just he has a kid and later Amy's cross over into pop music causes a backlash what is she doing you know being all cute dance around some guy in a Christian video

Channel: cristanq

Views: 205,380

Keywords: Amy, Grant

Id: Q6oQ8dnVMhE

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 08 2007