We have long loved Amy Grant. Sure, her hits-deep discography has sound-tracked our musical memories for decades, a statement verified by the release of dozens of number-one records that have sold upwards of a couple-dozen million copies worldwide. But more than ear candy for our generation, or some iconic pop remembrances, for many of us, Grant’s personal songwriter pen sparked our first conversations with God.
Through verses of faith, choruses of hope and refrains of lots and lots of love, Grant has long participated in the conversation music employs to share a bigger story being told in and through us, by a Creator who has loved us from the get-go. And this big-picture narrative—especially when set to song—has changed the way we think, inspired the way we live, and colored our hearts forever.
This is the power of music. And this is the story of Christmas.
Since Grant released 1983’s iconic A Christmas Album, the six-time GRAMMY winner and Christmas Music Queen has been engaging our seasonal senses with a catalog of instant classic, orchestra-oriented holiday recordings. But for Tennessee Christmas (Capitol CMG)—her first holiday album in nearly twenty years—Amy Grant enlists her tender, acoustic-pop means of recent years to delve below the season’s surface greetings and explore the realities of life in December.
In between rehearsals for her annual run of holiday shows with husband Vince Gill at Nashville’s renowned Ryman Auditorium, Grant and I sat down for a poignant Christmas & Communion conversation about the full range of emotions this season elicits and why sadness is as important as gladness in embodying the full scope of hope at Christmastime.
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Thanks for the article about Amy Grant and for the reminder that Christmas can be both the most wonderful time of the year and can be some of the most challenging, as well. It’s a reminder that God is still in control no matter what we go through this or any time of the year.