Amy Grant on Making First New Album in 13 Years, ‘The Me That Remains’

With the just-released title track of her forthcoming album, “The Me That Remains,” Amy Grant refers to the 2023 bike accident that left her with a serious head injury: “Life cut me wide open / When my head hit the ground / Wasn’t my time for dying / Guess my soul just stuck around,” she sings. But she also refers to a lesser, more common disorientation probably shared by most of her contemporaries: “My face in the mirror doesn’t look the same” — adding that “I recognize a light in my eyes that never did fade.”

One thing that seemed to have faded was Grant’s aspirations as a record-maker: Her last album of new, original material came out 13 years ago. That drought is over with “The Me That Remains,” a 10-song collection produced by Mac MacAnally that she’ll be releasing on May 8. It will be her first record to come out through Thirty Tigers, the Nashville-based collective. That it has no affiliation with a Christian music company per se may technically be a first, after nearly five decades’ worth of crossover deals, but it won’t really be a surprise to fans who have seen her express a reflectiveness that speaks to a broad audience over the better part of her 49-year recording career.

Not surprisingly, these recently-still waters ran deep when Grant spoke with Variety via Zoom from her Nashville home this week to have the first detailed discussion about the new album. The record follows not just the bike accident but open-heart surgery before that, and “The Me That Remains” has moments as contemplative as you’d expect from someone who’d been through some trauma. But it’s also largely determinedly upbeat, and in conversation, she’s thoughtfully unruffled and determined to foster community, not just focus on herself. (The album can be pre-ordered here.)

The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. At the end of it, you can read “A Eulogy to My Younger Self,” a piece of prose Grant recently wrote about what there is to be let go of in a public and private life and what, indeed, remains.

This is your first album with Thirty Tigers. Does it feel good to be with a company that probably has different expectations, or maybe no expectations, of what music you should be making, and have a bit of a fresh start?

Yes. I actually met David Macias in person yesterday for the first time, after meeting him via Zoom. I love the work culture there. When he was describing different artists, he said, “We’re not all the same mindset.” They are such an artist-driven company. And he played me a song that was from a new project by Mike Reid and Joe Henry, called “Life & Time.” He said, “I want you to listen to this lead vocal of a 78-year-old artist.” And Mike and I wrote a song for my record, and it was so moving. The more we talked, I said, “David, you sound like Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert when I signed with A&M Records forever ago.” And he said the very first paid internship he ever had was on the A&M lot, 75 bucks a week. And I was like, oh my gosh — we cut our teeth in that same sort of culture that was not about everybody trying to be the same, but welcoming each other to the table and making music more about discovery and trying to pique people’s curiosity. So I’m so glad to be a part of Thirty Tigers.

It’s 13 years since you last made an album of new, original material. You had some serious health issues that were obviously more important than thinking about making a record. But prior to that, even, it seemed not to have been a focus for a while, while you stayed active as a live performer. What gave you the bug to think now was the time, again?

Well, there was a decade of time from 2014 on that really I poured my creative energy into an organization in Nashville called Barefoot Republic. They have summer camps, and it’s a year-round program to put kids from all different socioeconomic, cultural and racial backgrounds together, so that their first experience with somebody that looks different from them is positive. Our farm hosted that camp for 10 years, and it was a 10-year commitment, really. After my bike accident, I said, “I think I can do one more year,” but I didn’t have the bandwidth to be involved the way I was before. … I so loved it. I love the outdoors. I think people are changed by being outside, and I just love that kids would get on the bus at 8 o’clock in the morning and not go back to their thermostat-controlled life until 5 in the afternoon. That’s the way we were when we were kids in the summertime. I would work on that all year long, even though the camp only lasted two weeks. … And every one of us has limited resources; we just have what we have. So all my health issues brought that into sharp focus, and I had to kind of go, “God, what should I use my resources for?”

So I concluded that commitment, and then, naturally, I just leaned back into songwriting. When I had two songs, I called a friend, Mac McAnally, and said, “Hey, any chance you’d go in the studio with me and produce this and hire the players? I don’t even know who’s on the circuit anymore.” That first night we did one session, and I said, “My gosh, I forgot how fun this is. I mean, this is like the most fun you can have!” And he said, “Hey, if making music isn’t fun, something is wrong with the world.” Then I just kept writing, and two months went by and I said, “Hey, I got more songs. Any chance…?” And he said, “I’ll book a double.” Another month went by. I said, “Hey, I got more songs.” … (Eventually) he said, “Hey girl, you got a record!” And I went, “Well, it’d be great if I had a record company.”

You know, it’s such a noisy world. Everybody is so creative and able to put things out. But for me, the real gift was just taking my time and energy and going back into the world of creativity with music. Now it’s time to set it all free, but man, I loved that, and I want to keep doing that. Where it lands is beyond my control. But the community of music makers is beautiful, and writing was so therapeutic, so I’m so glad I’m have gotten my energy back and what resources I have mentally and creatively and so glad to be back on this path. And the path I was on before was very intentional, but it wasn’t music. Even though I was touring, I didn’t have anything left to create.

Doing shows, I kind of will stick my head out around the curtain and go, “My gosh, all these people still want music to be a part of their life. Am I doing them a disservice coming out in my sixties and singing songs from the perspective of a 30-year-old?” Because there’s a lot of water under the bridge for all of us. So I feel like, at least for the people that would already come to a show, now I’ve got new songs to pull from. And that honors all of us. Because life just keeps going, if you’re breathing.

Why was Mac McAnally such a good partner for you, in doing this?

We had worked together maybe eight years ago, on a Christmas project, and I love his songwriting. Honestly, when I first started writing again, it was hard for me to wrap my head around a whole song. I started writing again in the summer of ’23, and I still was having really grave issues with short-term memory. You can write a lyric because it’s right there in front of you and you can alter things. But to try to write music, I would just hit a record thing on my phone, but it’s the absence of dependable, short-term memory. It’s hard to explain how compromised you feel.

So I reached out to songwriters that I hadn’t written with in a long time, and I’d say, “I’ve got kind of a music idea. Here’s a lyric, no sacred cows.” I reached out to Tom Douglas. I’d never written with him, and he said, “I’ll let you know in five minutes if I’m interested.” I thought, “Oh, dang, this is like ‘The Gong Show.’ Is he gonna like my lyric?” And one minute later he said, “I’m in.” I had sent the lyric for “The Me That Remains” to Mac… My limitations creatively forced me to reach out to people for help. I don’t feel those same limitations now, but I’m glad for that chapter of that healing journey.

The song “The Me That Remains” meant enough to you to make it the album’s title track. It seems tied in in some way to this “self-eulogy” for a younger you that you put down on paper, that we are including as part of this article, thinking of yourself in the third person a little bit and looking back at yourself. What went into writing the title song?

Our youngest child, who’s in her twenties, had created a space in her home for creativity, and she said, “Mom, you should create a space for creativity in your home.” I thought, oh, that’s interesting — not my desk that is constantly cluttered, but a space that’s creative. Our house used to be full of kids; we’re empty nesters now. So I created a space with paintings I had done, an old turntable, and my 45 collection. There was only a child’s chair in that room, because it was mostly just space to move, for if I wanted to set up an easel. The day I finished creating that space, I sat down in that child’s chair and just wrote out “The Me That Remains,” top to bottom. I wasn’t thinking about writing a song. I just picked up a paper and a pen, because I’m a writer, but I just hadn’t given myself the room to do that in a long time. I guess it was therapy.

You have a song with Ruby Amanfu called “How Do We Get There From Here?”….

She and I both were part of an artist group going to the state capitol to talk about gun control after the Covenant shooting in 2023. In November of 2023, I just sat down and said, “I’m not gonna get out of this chair until I write something about that experience.” I just sat there and sat and said, “What do I have to say?” and I wrote the chorus for the song and the first verse, and then, because Ruby had been there, I sent it to her with kind of an idea for a melody. I was still having a hard time with melody at that point, and also with memory, so I sent that to her in the fall of ‘23. She sent it back to me the spring of ’25, saying, “I’ve worked on the melody.” So 15 months later… Things that fall into place might seem intentional looking back, but you’re just flying by the seat of your pants when you’re doing it.

The first two tracks on the album ask questions about where we’re at as a society. There’s “How Do We Get There From Here?,” where you talk about trying to get past “the shouting in the room.” And then before that as the first cut, you have the single you put out on Jan. 6, “The 6th of January (Yasgur’s Farm),” which a friend of yours wrote. It’s an interesting idea in that song, implicitly contrasting the day of Epiphany with the D.C. riot now also associated with that day. Before you get into some personal stuff on the album, you wanted to deal with a big picture of the nation, it seems like.

Yeah. What’s interesting… The whole reason I ever picked up a guitar, and the whole reason I ever went to my high school to sign up to do an assembly, was, to me: Conversation matters. When I was in high school, I started going to this hippie church, and it rocked my world. At the time, I was going to a girls’ prep school, and I thought, “Dang, the way people think about church (is different from) what I’m experiencing down on Music Row in Nashville with live music every Saturday night, where everybody’s sitting cross-legged on a patchwork carpet and there’s not all of the religious culture associated.” That was the mid-‘70s, and I was going: This is about acceptance and love. and what does love look like? I went to the head of school and said, “Can I do a program? I just want to start the conversation.” Do I have the answers? No. But that has never changed about me. To me, all kinds of creativity and thought-provoking moments happen when you create proximity and meaningful conversation. Every one of our lives takes all of our energy, and you cannot see life through another person’s lens. But when you try…

Last Sunday, we had such a cool neighborhood thread because of the ice storm. There are 12 houses on our street and we were all checking on each other. It was such a purposeful “How’s everybody doing?” Wires were down and it threw us together. Then there was kind of nothing going on, and I was having a cup of coffee Sunday morning and I put on the text thread, “Hey, what if we as a neighborhood rallied around a neighborhood in Nashville that doesn’t have the same resources? I’m not asking us to pay for somebody else’s upgrade, but to use our connections to give some of our fellow Nashvillians access to things that we take for granted. Anybody interested in the conversation? If you’re curious, come to my house at 7:30 tonight and tomorrow night.” And do you know, everybody on the street reached out… Somebody came on Monday and said, “This neighborhood that has a lot of public housing is gonna do a garden, and we could put our community service hours.” “We could…” “We could…” “We could…” Connecting surplus and need is the greatest adventure of all. And it’s not money. I mean, sometimes it is. But I’m like, just start the conversation. It’s not about who’s right. It’s just about: Who’s willing to pull up to the table?

You have a song like “Please Don’t Make Me Beg,” which you wrote with Jon Foreman of Switchfoot, and it has three verses that get into three different concerns. The first verse is about working diferences out in a marriage; the second is about an indigent man busking on a street corner; and the final verse gets into spiritual territory, referring to Jesus asking if the cup could pass from him before accepting his sacrifice.

When I wrote that third verse, he was like, “Oh, my, does it have to go there?” [Laughs.] And I was like, body, mind and soul — we’re all multilayered… But I look at the songs I’ve written or sung for the last 40 years, and that template of what gets my attention has never changed. I’ve been asking the same questions since I was in my twenties, whether it’s relationship, whether it’s questions about faith… This just feels like: Here’s a 65-year-old version of the same questions and thoughts that have circled my head my whole life.

A great deal of your fans have been with you 40 years, and some even 49 years, since you released your first album. And it’s interesting how a lot of them latch onto you at different points in your life and career, and either want you to stay in a certain place or to move ahead to a different place, depending on what their own journey is and how they identify you with that. When the “6th of January” song came out last month. I was reading the comments, all over the spectrum. There are people who identify with your early records very strongly and they want you to think and sing like you always have. And then there’s people who may see you get involved with gun control or have heard you on a gay-affirming program and think that’s the Amy Grant they identify with and want more of. You have been that kind of influential figure that fans want to see themselves in, wherever they’re at in their journey. Even though you’re not really on social media and putting yourself out there that often.

We have access to so much more information than we used to. And I think that we, as a culture, if something feels familiar in another person, we tend to gravitate toward that. The familiarity might be the way they look, might be the the language they use, it might be the music they play, it might be the causes they support, but a common ground is what makes you lean in to somebody. And I think because of social media, there’s so much more access to our differences. So, yeah, I distance myself from that, because I just think less is more. … It just takes all your energy to live your own life and help each other. When our paths align, or when hard times come, then be there for each other. But I just feel like the pressure of trying to present too much is a heavy weight for anybody to carry, because we’re constantly changing. So just be who you are today. You’re gonna be different five years from now, so don’t die on the hill of whatever you presented, because life will come at you and it will change you. It’s like we’re in some giant rock tumbler, and it’s gonna keep doing that.

This year, it is 49 years since your first record, and the 50^th anniversary of your signing with Myrrh. Do you have plans for any kind of semi-centennial celebration?

That didn’t occur to me. We all have milestones in our lives, whatever they are — you know, being at a job for a certain amount of time… If I’m introducing a song, I’ll say, “Man, I’ve been singing this song for 45 years. Whew.” But that doesn’t change somebody’s experience of the song. So sometimes when you drag your own experience into it, it is just too many words. The best thing about saying “I sang this song for the first time on a stage 45 years ago” is, to me, what that speaks is, “Man, 45 years, this song still matters for her. I think I’ll listen.”

You have talked about how “we” is a crucial word for you that you almost meditate on.

Do you ever sit in traffic and you look at all the people also in traffic and go, “Man, we’re in traffic and every one of us has a full plate. Every one of us did not expect to be here, stuck not moving for this 12-minute (logjam).” And to look around and go, “Well, here we all are, and we’re having our own version of stuck in traffic” — that’s a different way to look at it than “Me, me, me, me, me. I’m stuck in traffic. What’s wrong with the world?” Instead of to go, “We are all sharing this. We’re stuck.” It sounds silly to say it out loud, but it is a different way to live life.

Do you think this is a different record than one you might have written before you had an accident or open-heart surgery or any of the trauma ? Going back to “Lead Me On” in the ‘80s, people have seen you as mature and reflective, so that’s not something strikingly new for you. Is there any way you feel like it might still be a different record than you might’ve made 10 years ago?

Man, I think I would say it was just right on time. This is a record that I’m making now, in light of everything that I’m trying to get rid of, andin light ofeverything that life has brought. “Right on time” is another phrase I kind of say a lot to myself, or with my kids, whatever they’re going through.

One of my daughters has moved away but we helped her buy a house in Nashville that she’s going to fix it up to rent. We had an experience where she had paid somebody to do a job, and it had not been completed, and her reaction in the middle of the experience was explosive and frustration and angst. And my experience 32 years further down the road was not that; I was like, “Hmm, who do I know? Who could we call?” In her mind, she just needed to air her feelings, and in my mind, I’m going, it’s like we got dropped down in this unasked-for landscape, and so I’m already thinking about problem solving. She said, “I gotta go. I need to call a friend and have a beer and some food and just have a bitch session.” And I said, “Do it. Do it. I just can’t drum that up at this point in my life.” All to say, she’s right on time in her reaction, and I’m right on time in my reaction.

And the next day, it was so crazy. She had all this stuff she had to get rid of. And I had met a woman in a line at the grocery store at Christmas time a year ago, and we stayed in touch. She had a moving truck coming to Nashville to pick up some things, because she had gone back to take care of her mother in another town. She just texted me: “I’m showing up in Nashville today, just thought I’d say hi.” I went, “Is there any chance you need…” — and I listed this whole list of stuff that my daughter’s got to get rid of, because she’s simplifying her life and she moved. And she was like, “I’ll take all of it.” I said, “Do I need to find a mover?” And she said, “I’m in town with a moving truck.” And it was just like, in what universe does that happen? And within 24 hours, my daughter said, “The whole world tilted in a positive way.”

But to me, whatever happens in life, if your first response is bracing and anger, you can’t help it if it’s your first response. But if you’re willing to say, “Thank you for this awful thing that I did not want,” “Thank you” opens the door for all kinds of possibilities. Anger and bracing closes the door. There is something about just going, “Well, it is what it is. I wouldn’t have voted for this” — and, even if you’re not brave enough to say “thank you,” just acceptance. I think that is a gift that comes with time. It’s not Pollyanna, but it’s going, “OK, whatever it is, there’s something good to be experienced in this, and it’s gonna be connection of some kind.”

Anyway, I’m talking way too much. But however life looks right now is distilled into a few songs that we’re putting out. That’s a good way to tie it together.

EULOGY TO A YOUNGER ME

In connection with the release of the forthcoming album, Grant provided a copy of a “eulogy” she wrote for her former selves. She told Variety: “The ‘Eulogy to a Younger Me’ wasn’t my idea. I was telling a therapist, ‘I get on stage and I just feel there’s an inner critic saying “You can’t sing like you could when you were younger,” and I cannot get rid of that inner critic. I just want to welcome myself, as a 65-year-old, walking out on stage.’ And she said, ‘Well, just write a eulogy to your younger self. Be very grateful.’ I thought, what a weird idea…”

Grant’s “eulogy”:

I’m here today to pay tribute to a younger version of myself. I want to recognize the gifts and accomplishments of the young woman, Amy Grant, who lived an extraordinary life, and surely one that she never imagined. I’m guessing that the “unimagined part” is the experience of life that many of us live… Because life only reveals itself one day at a time, one step at a time. 

As part of an amazing creative team, made up of songwriters, business executives, record company creatives, promoters, and amazing musicians, Amy brought her simple, and faith-filled view of the world to a public stage. Born into a family with a heritage of church-going, and benevolence, Amy discovered the possibility of a vibrant relationship with Jesus through the hippie days of the Belmont Church in the 1970s…and sang about it. The combination of music, shared faith, love and acceptance, and eternal connection fueled the flame that illuminated her entire life.

I would have to say about young Amy that she rarely thought about or pictured an overview of a situation, but was simply willing to go where she was asked to go, confident that the purpose and goal was always about seeing people… And inviting the love of God, that brought all of us into being, to be there and visible too. Amy was never the best singer or the best musician in a gathering, but her earnest desire to see the world through a lens of love was transformative, to herself and to her audience. Jerry Moss of A&M Records once commented that he would’ve bought a ticket just to hear her talk. 

Amy‘s ability to communicate an idea was never a direct line of thought, but instead a meandering story that landed in an unexpected way, bringing understanding and enlightenment. I don’t know that she was as smart as people assumed she was. Instead, I think she was discovering the same truth that she was sharing, even if she spoke it aloud. 

Amy always attracted people on the fringe because of the way she saw herself in relation to others… as deeply connected, having need of each other‘s gifts, similarities and differences. The conflict that their differences brought mattered… the push and the pull of being alive, of seeing each other and recognizing how love connects us all.

Amy had a freakish amount of energy. Her friend and fitness instructor Ruth McGuinness reminded her of this continually. She was a hard worker, and a study in endurance, which made her very demanding life enjoyable.

She was not afraid of realizing a big dream… Whether it was a large gathering for a shared meal …for games …or opening her private world to hundreds of high school and college kids to experience The Loft…or hosting daycamps… or KeepingTheFire. Everything was about a shared experience.

Amy was a time optimist. She instinctively looked for the best in a person. She had a great memory for names and faces but couldn’t recall the model number of the car she drove. She could string words together on the fly, creating magic. Living in the moment, and blooming where she was planted were her super powers.

Through 17 years of a challenging marriage, she found incredible joy in music, in her children and extended family, in purposeful work, and in her friendships. Meeting Vince Gill in 1993 and responding to their immediate connection slowly changed her whole world. By 1999 she had divorced Gary Chapman. In March 2000 she married Vince, and by 2001 had given birth to their daughter Corrina. Blending families and continuing as individual artists was an uncharted road, discovered one step at a time. 

Through the years, Amy gradually untethered from the faith-community culture that had been the framework of her earlier life. She became familiar with unanswered questions about God and the expression of Divine Love in the world. She saw, through a changed lens, the capacity of people to help or hurt, to bring harm or healing… seeing that each of us is capable of both, and how powerful our choices are in affecting ourselves and the world around us.

In 2020 we all experienced a changed reality because of the coronavirus pandemic. Over the next few years, a continued slow-down marked Amy‘s life: an open heart surgery, a life altering bike accident, additional surgeries and the quietness of an empty-nest home.

Given time to process decades of a life — one that was both exciting and difficult — has brought the 65-year-old woman that I have become to this place of needing to remember and release the younger Amy Grant… the younger me. I will miss her unique and youthful bright light in this world.

I imagine that each of us, if we live long enough, will witness the passing of our younger selves. I can see ahead of me now, the deep, continual and meaningful work of recovery, reconciliation, and restoration…. within myself and with the world around me.

There are a lot fewer bells and whistles around this deeper work. The years I’ve lived, the loss of my youthful vocal strength, and the quickness of delivering my thoughts means that everything pulses at a different vibration. And yet, life’s discoveries and mysteries are even more compelling to me now. And worth sharing. 

I’m thankful for each day and curious to find connection and purpose and how the love that made us all will emerge and express itself in and through me today.