Career: ‘The Queen of Christian Pop’
Amy Grant entered the professional music scene at a very young age. Just five weeks before her 16th birthday, she received her first offer for a recording contract. As the story went, Grant wrote her first song, “Mountain Top,” in 1976. And aside from her public performance at Harpeth Hall School, she also recorded a demo with church youth leader Brown Bannister. When Bannister was dubbing the demo, the owner of the recording studio Chris Christian heard it and played it for World Records.
She recorded her first album in 1977, and a year later, she performed her first ticketed concert. Grant enjoyed the success of her Christian hits until in the mid-1980s, when she decided to broaden her audience and cross over into mainstream pop. This decision inevitably created issues, and it was frowned upon by many Christian fans. But the truth was she never really moved on from the genre as she wanted to become the first-ever Christian singer-songwriter who was also a successful contemporary pop singer.
And true enough, she did. Her 1991 album ‘Heart in Motion’ earned chart success with her track “Baby Baby” hitting number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Other Amy Grant songs on the album also charted high, making it her best-selling album with over five million copies sold. In 2002, she went back to her roots with her album ‘Legacy…Hymns and Faith.’
