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I was flooded with nostalgia last week as Amy Grant’s “Lead Me On” was re-released in a two-disc 20th anniversary edition.
Grant is hardly a larger-than-life stereotypical diva in the vein of Diana Ross or Bette Midler, and yet one of the funny things I’ve discovered since coming out is that I wasn’t the only little gay boy growing up in Fundamentalist Christian America who found some still-kind-of-undefineable oasis in Grant and her music.
In the woefully unhip environment in which I came of age, Grant, believe it or not, gave me something to latch onto. Her music, as evidenced by this anniversary edition and re-issues of her back catalogue Sparrow/EMI released last year, has held up remarkably well.
What hasn’t held up so well is Grant herself, or at least her career. As a long-time fan I found this deluxe edition a treat but listening to it was also a bittersweet experience because it accentuated what I’ve been gradually realizing about the singer over the past 10 years — she’s become a pale shadow of the vibrant artist she used to be, now seemingly content to drift along on half-baked reissues of her classics and a bevy of intermittent specialty projects comprised of sleepy arrangements of hymns and Christmas songs (her seventh, depending on how you count, holiday collection is due later this year — YAWN).
Yes, I realize the music industry, like my profession, is in a free fall down the toilet. Record company employees, like reporters, are dropping like flies.
Easy climate, of course, in which to avoid making music. And yet it’s the true artists, I believe, who soldier on. In a Billboard interview a couple months ago, Dolly Parton said she’d always make albums even if she had to sell them out of the trunk of her car. To me, that’s an artist. I’m not saying Grant isn’t talented — she unquestionably is. But she seems to lack the fire and muse to be inspired to continue to push herself artistically. That’s her prerogative, of course. But it’s tragic, whether we’re talking about Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Amy Grant or whomever else you can think of, when a once-vital artist derails into autopilot and, in the case of Grant and her endless reissues, double dipping.
Mitchell and Bush eventually returned with marvelous comeback albums. So far the “Lead Me On” deluxe is the best we have from Grant.
It’s worth picking up, though, for four live cuts taken from the legendary 1989 “Lead Me On Tour,” which was never released on any home video format and for which bootlegs are super rare.
The bonus disc on which they appear accentuates what’s happened to Grant better than anything. She re-records no-frills, snoozy arrangements of three “Lead Me On” tracks then sequences them next to four electrifying renditions from the tour which find Grant tearing it up to a degree she hasn’t — even live — for years. There used to be a little Janis Joplin/Melissa Etheridge in her delivery. She sounds more like Judy Collins these days.
By the time the last of the live tracks ends, you’re ready to scream in disbelief — who was the Sparrow idiot who greenlit the new renditions at the expense of the rest of the vintage live stuff? That the whole concert wasn’t released is a crime of unfathomable proportions. I saw that tour. I know how good it was.
But quibbles notwithstanding, there’s no denying Grant was a great artist once.
I excavated this retrospective review I wrote for “Lead Me On” back in 2001 shortly after CCM Magazine named it the best Christian album of all time. This originally ran in the Journal, a West Virginia daily newspaper I wrote for at the time. Enjoy:
I remember distinctly the first time I heard it. At the time I wasn’t a “street date” kind of music fan so a friend of mine actually got it before I did.
As a cassette of Amy Grant’s then-new “Lead Me On" wafted through the speakers of the car we were in, we looked over the packaging and compared knee-jerk reactions. Only later did I realize this wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction record.
And I even remember a few weeks later when I picked up my own copy on vinyl. All of these experiences remain indelible in my mind and I was reminded of them recently when I heard that a new book called “The 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music” ranked “Lead Me On” in the top spot. I could hardly argue. The album went on to become, for me, the most compelling album I ever purchased.
Working with a list compiled by nearly three dozen music writers and critics for its 20th anniversary issue, CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) Magazine editors added to that 1998 list, then ranked the selections according to most influential.
For people who’ve followed CCM (the genre, not necessarily the magazine), the news that “Lead Me On” was ranked first comes as no real surprise. As its release date loomed, shipping orders ensured that “Lead Me On” would be RIAA-certified Gold. No Christian album until then had received such pre-release demand. Shortly thereafter the album was also certified Platinum. When award season rolled around, “Lead Me On” was also honored at both the Christian music Dove Awards and at the Grammys.
For Grant, the project was a creative zenith. Though 1991’s “Heart in Motion” outsold “Lead Me On” and made Grant a household name with fun pop fluff like “Baby Baby” and “Good For Me,” it is the earlier record that has withstood the test of time and, like other classic albums, still sounds fresh and undated today.
That said, there are some ironies in putting “Lead Me On” at the top of a list of great Christian albums. Though the parameters and characteristics of Christian music are continually debated and defined, no matter how you cut it, “Lead Me On” isn’t an overtly religious record.
In various interviews over the years, Grant has indicated that she feels making a distinction between gospel music and pop is rather arbitrary. She doesn’t generally approach album making with those kinds of issues in mind and so it’s inevitable that subject matter of all kinds makes it way onto her projects.
And “Lead Me On” is no different. Coming off a 1987 No. 1 pop hit with Peter Cetera (“Next Time I Fall”), Grant did not attempt to use that momentum as a precursor to “Lead Me On.”
What followed was an epic and eloquent album marked by superior songwriting (Grant co-wrote nine of the album’s 12 songs) that ran the full gamut from references to slavery to simple declarations of love.
It is the best representation (so far anyway) of what it is that makes Amy Grant a great artist. Her voice is not technically impressive but has a rich, grainy timbre. She’s hardly ever recorded a bad song, but the “Lead” tracks are the best. They have depth but are not too inaccessible. They are emotional, scathing, reassuring, celebratory, melancholy, passionate and articulate and reward the repeat listener. The realization of the profundity of this work gradually occurs.
(To inspire interest in the then-new compact disc format, two additional tracks, “Wait For the Healing” and “If You Have to Go Away” were included on CD; the vinyl and cassette versions of the album contain only 10 tracks.)
It begins simply enough with two brief, separate shakes of a tambourine after which an unusually transcendent and lushly layered blend of acoustic guitars and percussion form a sonic sunshower. The song, album opener “1974,” is a poetic reminisce of an earlier spiritual commitment, presumably by a younger Grant and her friends.
Like many of the tracks that follow it, “1974” is not an explicit declaration of anything. It’s sort of a gospel song in the style of Monet. Grant has often been criticized for soft-pedaling religious themes but, if anything, it makes her messages more universal and, in some circles, less off-putting.
Elsewhere, on the rustic, acoustic-flavored “Saved By Love,” she distills her vision of Christianity to this: “Nothing I can do/nothing I can say/we’re all just saved by love.”
But not all of the religious elements to the album represent a content, assured approach to faith. On the non-Grant-penned “What About the Love,” after taking a cynical look at nursing homes, corporate America, Wall Street and legalistic preachers, Grant sings, “Something’s wrong in heaven tonight.” With the gutsy delivery and jaded outlook, it’s a side of Grant we had not yet seen. The historical perspective is worth nothing — just a year before “Lead Me On” was released, the country was sent reeling from a series of teleevangelist scandals.
And “Lead Me On” also gave us another first: Grant presented an inward struggle, a dark side that was stark and unflinchingly honest. It’s a side of herself Grant would revisit on 1997’s “Behind the Eyes,” but it’s done more effectively on “Lead Me On.”
On the percussive rocker “Shadows,” Grant admits “there are two of me/one does the right thing/one cannot see,” while the plaintive “Faithless Heart” finds her dealing with adulterous temptations: “Oh faithless heart/you tempt me to the core/but you can’t have a hold on me/so don’t come around anymore.”
Life doesn’t always work out the way one plans and it’s no different for Grant. On “Sure Enough,” she sings “sure enough to never want to be without you/sure enough to stay for good.” Grant was divorced from then-husband Gary Chapman in 2000, but the song holds up for two reasons.
For one, we can assume she was sincere when she recorded it. Secondly, as Grant has said before, her songs are not meant to shine a spotlight of scrutiny on her own life but rather to capture a feeling or moment that might have universal significance.
There are lighter moments too. The Jimmy Webb-penned “If These Walls Could Speak,” a piano-and-strings ballad, is poignant nad simple while “If You Have to Go Away,” a country-flavored song, is an optimistic goodbye that sounds like it applies more to a college student leaving home than a romantic relationship ending.
Along with 1985’s “Unguarded,” “Lead Me On,” while earthy and contemplative, finds Grant at her most rock and roll. To some, who only know the singer by her pop hits, to mention Grant and rock in the same sentence may seem odd, but “Lead Me On” has several up-tempo, electric guitar-fueled rock songs.
From the anthemic title track to the searing electric guitar solo that closes “Wait For the Healing,” to the drum solo that opens “All Right” and the passionate vocals Grant incorporates on “What About the Love” and “Shadows,” “Lead Me On” is full of tastefully executed, yet passionately delivered rock.
Subsequently the contrasting quieter moments resonate. “Say Once More” (not the same song Grant recorded on 1980’s “Never Alone”) is a tender ode to love that, like much of the album, transcends the sum of its parts. Ostensibly little more than a simple declaration of love, a tender melody and overlapping vocals give it a bittersweet, fleeting urgency.
These elements combine to make “Lead Me On” a masterpiece of album making. Terms like CCM and Christian rock have such alienating connotations that it’s really best to forget all that and enjoy “Lead Me On” for what it is — a record abut life from a woman who believes there’s a God.
Legions of “secular” singers, from Bob Dylan to U2 to Aretha Franklin to Dolly Parton (and dozens of others) have let their faith infiltrate their recorded work. It’s only natural that a songwriter’s personal feelings will affect the work.Grant’s early ’90 radio success is a bit of a shame because now people only think of bubblegum when her name is mentioned.
Smart, yet accessible, “Lead Me On” has been widely recognized as Christian music’s finest moment. It deserves a wider appreciation as it could easily stand beside U2’s “The Joshua Tree,” Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” and dozens of other as one of the great pop/rock albums ever made.
 Posted by Joey DiGuglielmo,
Washington Blade News Editor | Jul. 3 at
5:24 PM | JDiGuglielmo@washblade.com
Permalink: http://www.washblade.com/blog/index.cfm?blog_id=19495
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