“I don’t remember the crash. I don’t remember the weeks after that,” singer-songwriter Amy Grant said of a serious bike accident that left her unconscious for nearly 10 years. minute.
The fall, which occurred this past July, forced the six-time Grammy winner to cancel a fall tour and struggle at times to remember lines from her songs — even the names of some of those closest to her.
“At first it was just trying to remember my family’s names,” she said. “A lot of sentences start with ‘Are they dead or alive?’.”
But she called the accident a gift.
“Since 2020, I’ve been flirting with death left and right,” Grant said. “Three things I said over and over again: ‘I can’t believe I have all my teeth straight.’ “I had a problem with my shoulder. ” and “I need this,”‘ she said, referring to the bicycle accident.
“I’m thinking, like, what energy do I have left, and how would I want to use it differently? It’s a talent,” she said. “The real talent is this: I fell in love with music before anyone was listening, and I wrote songs because they helped me make sense of life, and it was like I woke up and said, ‘I still have the same toolkit, and I think I’m in me.’”
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Grant doesn’t take anything for granted these days, and she’s written a book of her recollections after a serious cycling accident. When Grant invited Vladimir Duthiers and “CBS Mornings” to preview her upcoming Christmas show, she revealed that at first, she was just trying to remember “Winter Wonderland” Struggling with some words in such classics.
“It’s been a really slow season,” she told CBS News. “I’ve been doing 0.5 mph on the treadmill like I’m merging into the interstate.”
Her return not only brought Grant back to the stage, but also brought her back to one of the biggest spotlights in the country: the Kennedy Center Honors. This month, she was recognized as a Kennedy Center honoree.
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Grant has sold more than 30 million albums and her music has been streamed more than 1 billion times worldwide. However, the multi-platinum artist never made it to Nashville. Grant grew up there.
“My parents loved music, but I think we all took three or four years of perfunctory piano from that lady down the street. We did sing at church. We were one of those families that went to church on Sunday morning, and on Sunday night, Wednesday night. I don’t remember a single sermon by a missionary. But I remember the music,” she said.
Grant remembers hearing those hymns made her think, “My God, you could do some good PR here!”
And so, at just 15, Grant hit her first peak with the release of her self-titled debut album.
So young, still wearing her high school ring on the album cover.
“A guy my sister was dating heard a copy of the tape I made for my parents,” Grant said. “They called the label and played that tape on the phone. He even said, ‘She’s not that good. She’s okay. She’s not that good, but she sounds genuine.’ I was. Yeah, I feel like I grew up with my audience.”
Grant’s audience grew rapidly. Soon, she had her first Christian album to go platinum, 1982’s “Age to Age.” It didn’t take long for her star to really shine, with early ’90s crossover hits like “Baby, Baby” from her best-selling album Heart in Motion.
A song some critics thought was “too sexy” by the Christian artist was actually written while watching her own child Millie.
“I didn’t know it was about your daughter,” Duthiers said.
“Yeah, well, I mean, that’s a great thing to do with a song; it could be about anything,” Grant said.
It was an adorable moment when Grant took to the stage with her baby at the 34th Annual Grammy Awards. “From a mother’s point of view, getting a two-year-old up so late, Pooh!“
That “baby” recently made Grant a grandmother.
Her 2013 album, How Mercy Looks From Here, is dedicated to Grant’s own mother, who died of dementia, and features some of Grant’s favorite musicians, including Carole King (“Our Time”), James Taylor ( “Don’t Try So Hard”) and Vince Gill (“Better Don’t Know”).
Grant and Gill were married in 2000. The couple’s combined 28 Grammy wins fill the shelves of their home studio — the most recent being “When My Amy Prays,” a tribute to him:
Grant recalled going to the doctor with Jill three years ago: “The cardiologist said, ‘Hey, let me check you go out. ’ And Vince was like, ‘Oh, she’s the Energizer Bunny. Now I’m gone ‘thank God’ because I had a birth defect that wasn’t found and he said I’d die at 62. “
Grant, who just celebrated her 62nd birthday, was back in hospital after a nasty bike accident after the “Every Heartbeat” artist underwent open-heart surgery.
Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post/Getty Images
Amy Grant kicked off a series of Christmas performances with her husband on Monday night. She will hit the road in the spring to make up for a tour that was forced to cancel this fall.
Watch the 44th Annual Kennedy Center Awards on December 22 at 9:00 pm ET on CBS and stream on Paramount+.
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