By the time Amy Grant was nineteen, she was Contemporary Christian music’s most celebrated singer. Grant grew up in the Church of Christ where she sang for God two nights a week. As a teen, she decided to pursue a career in music, writing her first song while attending devotional meetings at her high school.

Grant recorded a demo while working as an intern at a recording studio and the owner was so impressed he signed her to his own label and released her first album Amy Grant in 1977. It spawned three top 10’s on Billboard’s Christian Songs chart.

The following year, Grant began touring while balancing college studies. Her second album My Father’s Eyes was released in April 1979. At its record release party, she met future first husband gospel singer Gary Chapman. He’d written its title track, and it would become her first of many Christian Songs Chart-toppers. Her third album Never Alone came out in 1981 and features the #3 Christian Songs hit “Look What Has Happened To Me”.

After two live albums, her 1982 album Age To Age officially made Grant a Christian Contemporary Music superstar, becoming the first CCM album ever certified Gold (1983) and Platinum (1985). It was later named Gospel Album Of The Decade in a poll done by Billboard Magazine. After a 1983 holiday album, Grant released Straight Ahead – her first to generate enough initial sales to chart on the Billboard 200.

1985’s Unguarded brought Grant into the mainstream with her top 30 pop crossover “Find A Way”, followed by “Wise Up” which peaked at #66. Her first trip to the top of the Hot 100 would happen the following year with “The Next Time I Fall”, a duet with Peter Cetera. That same year, Grant and Chapman married. Her 1988 album Lead Me On was a step back in terms of pop crossover success, but still offered four singles that topped the Christian Songs Chart.

Grant’s Grammy-nominated 1991 album Heart In Motion exploded into the mainstream when its lead single “Baby Baby” topped the Hot 100, then “Every Heartbeat” reached #2. The album also spawned three more top 20s that year, making her a national pop superstar – a move that bothered some devout Christian fans who called the album “too secular”. Many Christian radio stations and retailers spoke out against the album for “crossing over” and stopped airing its songs. As of 2018, Heart In Motion is her only album to chart outside of the US. It has been certified 5x platinum and remains the best-selling Christian Music album of all time.

In late 1993, Grant did a Christmas special with and performed in three concerts with Vince Gill. In 1994, she invited him to record the duet “House of Love”. Her album of the same name followed that year and its lead single “Lucky One” and the title track became Grant’s final top 40 pop crossover hits.

Meanwhile, Grant’s relationship with the married Gill grew to the point she would note on a legal pad each time she was around him. By the end of the year, Grant reportedly told her husband, “I don’t love you anymore. You’re the biggest mistake I’ve ever made… I’ve given my heart to another man.” Rumors flew over the next few years about infidelity (which they have both denied).

Grant released Behind The Eyes in 1997. That same year, Gill announced he was getting a divorce. She learned of it from a newspaper headline, to which her husband commented he ‘was grateful someone had finally made the first move’. Grant soon divorced Chapman and married Gill in 2000, explaining to The Tennessean that while her relationship with Gill ‘may have hastened the end of her marriage’, she believes ‘the final result was inevitable’. Chapman, however, disagreed, noting “a lot of people just don’t want to believe the obvious”.

Many devout Christian fans were shocked by the divorce, commenting, “Amy did not have one valid biblical reason to divorce her husband,” and “God hates divorce. It’s as simple as that.” Early on, even Grant’s children often made comments to Gill like “You make me sick. Put a shirt on.” and “If you ever hurt my mother, I’m going to kill you.” However, the couple feel the birth of their child Corinna in 2001 helped the family eventually bond.

Since 2002, Grant’s albums have marked a return to more overtly Christian themes. The first of these albums, Legacy… Hymns And Faith, is her last to be certified Gold, but several of the singles from these albums have still shown up in the top 40 of the Christian Songs Chart over the last two decades.