Amy Grant establishes herself an artist beloved across genres
When Amy Grant is awarded the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday, it will celebrate the career of a superstar who broke barriers in contemporary Christian music before she crossed over to pop and mainstream audiences and established herself an artist beloved across genres and generations.
The lifetime achievement is a natural occasion for reflection, which makes it incredibly bittersweet that when it comes to the most recent significant event in her life, Grant can’t remember anything.
She doesn’t remember how she fell off her bicycle that day in late July when she was riding with a friend at Nashville’s Percy Warner Park. She was unconscious for about 10 minutes and doesn’t remember her nearly week-long hospital stay, where she was treated for a concussion and a shoulder injury that would eventually require surgery, along with cuts and abrasions. Her doctors said if she hadn’t been wearing a helmet, it could have been much worse.
She’s not exactly sure about her first memory after the accident. She recalls her husband of 20-plus years, country music icon Vince Gill, and their family and friends gathering at her home, but it’s all a blur. Really, her main takeaway is the slowdown that came during her recovery.
Grant hasn’t had much downtime since she was discovered as a teenage singer and released her first album at the age of 16. She went on to sell more than 30 million albums, won Grammy Awards and Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, and became the “queen of Christian pop.”
Though she was able to kick off her much-anticipated Christmas concert tour the weekend after Thanksgiving, the Kennedy Center Honors will be her first major event in months.
“It has been the quietest season of my life,” said Grant, 62, the first contemporary Christian artist to be awarded the prize. She’s sitting in an armchair in the front room of her stately yet cozy home, the sun streaming through the windows on an unusually warm November morning with her publicist and management associate nearby. Occasionally, a cocker spaniel mix named Okie wanders into the room to urgently sniff everyone.
“There are times in our lives where we can just be so busy that you’re present, but you’re also ticking off that list of things that need to be done. Or somebody sits down for a conversation and you’re giving 100 per cent attention, but you also can’t make the next thing on the calendar completely go away,” Grant said. —