Long before the Grammys, the sold-out tours and the decades-spanning career, Amy Grant was a teenager with a guitar, writing songs and playing them wherever she could. She didn’t think she was the most talented, but she knew that she wanted to keep performing.
“I wrote my first song when I was a sophomore. I was 15,” the 65-year-old recalls. “And there were always better musicians and singers in whatever circle I found myself in, but I just loved the experience of music.”
During that time of her life, Grant says she was involved with a “hippie church” down on Nashville’s Music Row that had live music in its coffee shop on Saturday nights. Inspired by that experience, she approached the head of her prep school and asked if she could start doing a chapel program.
“I found a setlist for this when I was going through my parents’ stuff,” Grant says with a laugh. “I would sing ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ by Carole King, then one of my Jesus songs, then a John Denver song, then another one of my Jesus songs.”
People began asking her if she would sing for their luncheons or youth groups, and Grant did. “None of it was good,” she jokes, “but it was free!”
She made a reel-to-reel tape for her mom and dad, and although she didn’t know it at the time, that gift would change her life.
Photo By Ed Rode
An Unlikely First Impression
That tape got passed around until it was heard by a family friend, Chris Christian, who was a couple of years out of college and just starting in the music business. Contemporary Christian music was new as a commercial genre, and a record company in Texas, Myrrh Records, was looking for artists. Christian played the tape for someone at the label over the phone, and, Grant recalls, they said, “She’s not that good, but she sounds sincere.”
Soon after, she received a late-night call from Christian, who told her the company wanted to sign her to a contract.
“My father got on the phone, and I got grounded because I was on the phone after phone hours,” Grant says, laughing. “So, at 15, I was grounded and got a record deal on the same phone call. You can’t make this up!”
Finding Her Way
Grant’s self-titled debut album was released when she was 16, near the end of her senior year. She hadn’t told anyone — not even her friends — that she was making a record.
“I was signing albums at the same time I was signing yearbooks for the girls in my school, so my entrance into that kind of public life was so quiet and beautiful,” Grant remembers. “It was an unobserved era — no social media, no bells and whistles. I just kind of found my way one thing at a time.”
In the nearly 50 years since, Grant’s path has taken her from those quiet beginnings to six Grammys, an expansive catalog of songs and a 26-year marriage to singer-songwriter Vince Gill, with whom she has a blended family that includes five children.
Her life hasn’t been without its share of challenges, though. She had open-heart surgery in 2020, in the midst of COVID-19 lockdowns, and later a devastating bike crash left her with a traumatic brain injury.
Photo By Ed Rode
A Life-Changing Accident
During the summer of 2022, Grant, who has long loved biking, was taking a ride through a park in West Nashville with a close friend. She doesn’t remember the accident itself, but others later told her what happened: Grant was following her friend downhill, and the road was damaged, with a four- or five-inch ledge jutting up. Her bike hit it, throwing her forward and causing her to hit her head. Although she was wearing a helmet and riding a heavy bike, Grant sustained that brain injury, as well as a brain bleed. She also required surgery on her right shoulder.
In the months that followed, doctors discovered a cyst in her throat — one she hadn’t known she had. The injuries from the crash caused it to go into accelerated growth, and she ultimately had to undergo surgery to remove it. While she had begun having trouble singing before the accident, the procedure restored her voice.
“If it had just stayed in slow-growth mode, I think, eventually, I wouldn’t have been able to hold pitch,” she says.
Grant struggled with her memory for a time after the crash, but she sought treatment and focused on her recovery. In May 2024, she met with a neuropsychologist to assess her memory, vocabulary and processing speed — all of which scored high. She did have one concern, though: She found herself retreating during conversations, staying quiet rather than joining in, because she didn’t have a good one-liner to add.
The neuropsychologist’s advice? Lean in.
“And guess what? I picked up a pen and started writing,” Grant says. “I wanted to know, Who am I? Who’s leaning in? My limitations with trying to create music created a new path with new co-writing partners.”
Since then, she has continued to move forward. Her most recent album, “The Me That Remains,” her first featuring original songs in more than a decade, was released in early May.
“Life has a lot of chapters,” Grant says. “Music changes, and styles change, but I think that I just continue returning to what captured me when I was young.”
In addition to Carole King, she has long loved James Taylor, the Beatles and Seals & Crofts, and she wanted to bring the feel of those early influences to her latest album because, as she says, it’s all about the song.
“Every song kind of finds its own audience or not, you know?” she explains. “But the fun really is in doing it — writing the song and creating the recording. I’ve been working hard.”
Photo By Ed Rode
Memories Of Lido Beach
During her childhood, Grant and her family spent many summers at Lido Beach in Sarasota, Fla., which ended up playing a part in her new album.
“I’ve always been an avid shell collector,” she says. “Shells collected on Lido Beach were part of the collage that is the front of the record.”
When Grant commissioned artist Wayne Brezinka to create the cover for “The Me That Remains,” he asked her to share objects that held personal meaning. She gathered quilts she had made, favorite books and puzzles, pieces of paper with her mother’s handwriting on them and those shells she had collected over the years. Brezinka used it all to create a collage that became the front of the album.
‘The Me That Remains’ album cover
Making Connections
Grant explains that the title track on “The Me That Remains” is about her journey following the bike accident.
“‘Bike wreck’ doesn’t rhyme with anything,” she jokes, “so that didn’t end up in the lyrics.”
More seriously, she realized that everyone is recovering from something, and that no matter what that is, it takes a toll.
“The loss of a job, the loss of a friend, the death of a loved one, some skill you no longer have, even just the passage of time — our response to anybody going through anything is, ‘Are you okay?’” she notes. “We say, ‘I’m good,’ because how do you say that life doesn’t feel the same way?”
Grant captures these emotions in her music. She co-wrote seven of the 10 songs on the record, including “Please Don’t Make Me Beg,” co-written with Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman, and “How Do We Get There From Here,” with two-time Song of the Year Grammy nominee Ruby Amanfu.
“As a songwriter, I just enjoy being a witness to all aspects of life around me and writing about it,” Grant says. “Although I didn’t write the whole record, I would never record anything unless it felt like it could’ve come through me. The real joy in this record was being back in the intentionally creative music arena.”
She adds, “Music is connective — it connects us to our own experience and to each other. I think what I’m most proud of with this album is that I was leaning in instead of retreating.”