Amy Grant

How could anyone who sounds so angelic be so controversial? Amy Grant began her career firmly on the sacred side of pop's dividing line, but as she embraced the mainstream (and it her), some conservative Christian fans felt abandoned. Case in point: "Baby Baby" sounded more like Prince than the King, and when the #1 pop hit's video featured Amy singing to someone other than her husband, criticism ensued. "El-Shaddai," from Grant's platinum-selling breakout album, Age To Age, took its title from a Judaic name for God, and remarkably for a Top 10 Contemporary Christian-charting single, about half its chorus was sung in Hebrew. And "Thy Word" (and its parent album, Straight Ahead) revolutionized Contemporary Christian music with its use of synths, and planted Grant firmly atop the Christian Albums chart for a staggering 61 weeks.

In Next Steps, we hear Amy in concert, in the pulpit, and more.

The 20-year-old Amy Grant hadn't yet made her leap to the mainstream in 1981, when she recorded concerts in Tulsa and Norman, Oklahoma, but as you can hear on her inspirational ballad "I'm Gonna Fly," she was more than ready to spread her worldly wings — and audiences loved it. Amy deftly straddled the line between the religious and secular spheres in the is-it-or-isn't-it lyric of her Dionne Warwick-esque pop ballad "In a Little While." But there's no mistaking where her sentiments lay in "Old Man's Rubble," as Grant married a bluegrass melody and a radio-friendly Adult Contemporary arrangement with straight-from-the-pulpit gospel preaching.

In Deep Cuts, Amy reworks a gospel standard, retreats from the microphone, revisits a pop hit, and more.

On her 2002 album, Legacy . . . Hymns & Faith, Amy Grant treats "Holy, Holy, Holy" more like a love song than a hymn, with its elegant string section and graceful mandolin arrangement cradling her voice in a moment of quiet reflection. With husband Vince Gill providing some tasty licks designed to show off his Taylor acoustic guitar, Amy digs into the hymnal for a rare instrumental, a slack-key style version of the gospel standard "How Great Thou Art." And on "Return To Pooh Corner," Amy provides a honey-sweet backing vocal as Kenny "House At Pooh Corner" Loggins updates his '70s hit in a recording intended for kids, but which will also entrance adult fans.

Amy Grant is by no means the first artist south of the Mason-Dixon Line to plant one foot in the gospel world and another in pop — both Tennessee Ernie Ford and a guy named Elvis leap to mind — but she's the biggest artist ever to launch a mainstream career from a Contemporary Christian music base. She hasn't done it without her share of controversy, first for embracing the pop world — in platinum-selling fashion — and later for divorcing her first husband (and subsequently marrying country superstar Vince Gill). Since then, she's mended her fences, most notably with her Rock of Ages . . . Hymns & Faith album, which won Grant her sixth GRAMMY®. Over the course of more than 30 years, the crystalline-voiced singer has proven to be one of Nashville's most enduring, and endearing, talents.