![\"Amy-Grant-Issue-No28\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Amy-Grant-Issue-No28.jpg\")
AMY GRANT<\/h1>\nAMY GRANT<\/h1>\n\u201cI love all forms of the creative process, whether it\u2019s cooking a meal or doing an art project,\u201d says Amy Grant, \u201cbut I\u2019d forgotten how much I missed that really intense process of making an album.\u201d\u00a0When it came time to record\u00a0How Mercy Looks From Here<\/i>, her first full-length album in eight years, Grant\u2014who began her career as a contemporary Christian artist, crossed over to pop in the early \u201990s, and crossed back a decade later\u2014threw herself into her work, writing or co-writing 10 of the record\u2019s 11 songs. She enlisted producer Marshall Altman (Marc Broussard, Natasha Bedingfield), and the two spent months tweaking every aspect of the album. \u201cWe decided, \u2018Let\u2019s just make a record that we would like to listen to and trust that it will find its own audience,\u2019\u201d she says. Grant tapped several A-list guest artists, including Carole King, James Taylor, and her husband, Vince Gill, to back her warm alto.<\/p>\n
Though she\u2019s won a half-dozen Grammys and 25 Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, and has sold 30 million albums over the course of her career\u2014which began when she was a teen\u2014Grant has no desire to stop creating. \u201cI think my best songs are still ahead,\u201d she says. \u201cI would love to write until the day I die. I don\u2019t know if I could do anything else very well.\u201d Grant discussed with us the new album, her creative process, and how one eventful week in her life yielded the record\u2019s title track.<\/p>\n
What inspired the album?<\/b><\/p>\n
While I never stopped writing or touring, the music I was making would trickle out a few songs at a time on a \u201cBest of\u201d or a Christmas compilation. I hadn\u2019t pursued a contract for current material just because it takes a certain amount of energy and effort to make a full-blown recording. I had teenagers at home\u2014though I\u2019m sure they wished I would disappear and go work on something\u2014and my mom\u2019s health was failing. My mom passed away in April 2011, and about a year later, I felt this rocket engine of creativity get slapped onto my brain. The songs that would become How Mercy Looks From Here<\/i> came from that. Around the same time, Peter York of Sparrow Records introduced me to Marshall. [Marshall] said, \u201cPlay me everything you\u2019ve written. We\u2019re going to take one song a week, tear it apart, and improve what you have.\u201d We started that process immediately and did that for a year.<\/p>\n
How do you write?<\/b><\/p>\n
At this stage of the game, I usually come up with an idea first. The hardest song to write is the one where you don\u2019t know what you want to say. I think writing lyrics is my strength, but I don\u2019t write every week. Sometimes I\u2019ll work on a song for months, picking it up and putting it aside. I\u2019m not prolific. I guess I could be, but there are too many other things going on in life. I\u2019ll maybe write five or six songs a year. Several of the songs on the record are songs I had written but, in trying to improve them, other writers were brought on. Composing music is not my strong point. A lot of the time, a producer would say, \u201cCan we just work on the music a little bit more? I love the idea of the song, but the music is leaving me cold.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where did the title track come from?<\/b><\/p>\n
I had that phrase, \u201cHow mercy looks from here,\u201d in my head for nearly three years. I kept saying, \u201cI\u2019m going to write this song,\u201d but I didn\u2019t know what I wanted to say. In one week in 2010, a flood hit Nashville, a good friend took his life, my cousin was killed in Afghanistan, and Jenny Gill [husband Vince Gill\u2019s daughter] got married in our backyard. It was unbelievable. That was the week I needed to write this song, though I didn\u2019t begin writing it for some time. We used the context of the flood for the story. The great thing about the song is that it doesn\u2019t matter if the listener knows the details behind it. There\u2019s a story behind every one of these songs, but if you can authentically capture the feeling, somebody can take that song and think, \u201cHey, that\u2019s just like my experience.\u201d Then the song is theirs, which is what you hope for with your music.<\/p>\n
How did you choose the guest singers?<\/b><\/p>\n
The backing vocals are one of the last things you add\u2014the songs have already been tracked, the lead vocals are done\u2014and choosing singers is like casting a part in a movie. You think, \u201cWhat voice do I want to hear doing this?\u201d The background part on \u201cDon\u2019t Try So Hard\u201d was going to be sparse, but I wanted the voice to be familiar. When Marshall and I were listening to the song, I said, \u201cThere is no other voice I\u2019d rather hear singing \u2018You\u2019re lovely even with your scars\u2019 than James Taylor.\u201d I\u2019ve loved his voice my whole life, and I\u2019d believe\u00a0those words coming from him.<\/p>\n
With Carole, I was included in a benefit concert for a camp for terminally ill children. Everybody was singing Carole King songs\u2014Katy Perry, Alicia Keys, Jakob Dylan, me. As we were leaving, I said to her, \u201cOh, would you sing on this song? You\u2019d be perfect for it!\u201d And she said yes. Carole and I were never in the studio together. Marshall and I sent the digital file of \u201cOur Time Is Now\u201d to her studio. We did the same\u00a0thing with James.<\/p>\n
What was the recording like?<\/b><\/p>\n
It was so much fun. Marshall is so spontaneous, and he\u2019s always willing and happy to chase an idea. We did months of pre-production work, tweaking lyrics and figuring out song structure and tempo. We have a recording studio at our house, but it made sense for me to go where Marshall was most comfortable. We tracked all the songs in one week at Studio D at House of Blues in Nashville. For the lead and background vocals, we worked at Marshall\u2019s hole-in-the-wall cottage across the street from the House of Blues. Vince recorded his vocals and guitar parts in our home studio.<\/p>\n
Ever consider your legacy?<\/b><\/p>\n
I think I\u2019m wired to live in the moment. If I\u2019m being introduced and the presenter reads the list of my accolades, sometimes I\u2019ll hear that and say to myself, \u201cI don\u2019t even think I would like that woman. Stop saying all that stuff.\u201d Every one of us changes as people. We grow and we\u2019re shaped by events and people in our lives. When you only live in the moment, none of those record deals or sales from the past affect today. At one point they were an amazing income stream, but it\u2019s different today, and that\u2019s good. Life keeps changing. When I\u2019m home, I want to be just \u201cMom.\u201d I\u2019ve never hung a gold record in the house or put an award out. I didn\u2019t want to be reminded of anything public\u00a0when I was home.<\/p>\n
Anything you still want to achieve?<\/b><\/p>\n
Last night, my 12-year-old daughter asked me to tell her a bedtime story for old time\u2019s sake. Until that moment, I had forgotten how much I loved doing that. I think that\u2019s why I love writing songs, because those are three-and-a-half minute stories. I don\u2019t think\u00a0I\u2019ve got the patience to completely flesh out a story\u2014writing all that dialogue sounds exhausting\u2014but someday I\u2019d like to write those stories down.<\/p>\n
\u2013Juli Thanki<\/p>\n
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AMY GRANT Life changes kick-start a creative revival for the Christian music icon\u00a0 \u201cI love all forms of the creative process, whether it\u2019s cooking a meal or doing an art project,\u201d says Amy Grant, \u201cbut I\u2019d forgotten how much I missed that really intense process of making an album.\u201d\u00a0When it came time to record\u00a0How Mercy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[820,7081,5736,7082,1008,6978,2373,5671],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10752"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10755,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10752\/revisions\/10755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}