"It takes a little time sometimes/To get your feet back on the ground" - Amy Grant, "Takes A Little Time" Amy Grant had reached a crossroads. It was l995, and although her career had spanned more than 18 years and included five Grammys and over 18 million copies in album sales, she felt she had just scratched the surface - not of success, but of her own expression.
"A few close friends, whose opinions I trust, asked me why my songs failed to represent the person that they know me to be," she says. "It was time to go below the surface, to make a record that might inadvertently shake up people's perceptions of me. What I found was that it shook me up most of all." For the next two years, she mined the depth of her feelings, sometimes painfully, and emerged with a better understanding of herself. "It takes a while to grow up, to figure out what you have to bring to the table," says Grant. "I felt this need to confront the structure of my life, who I am, what I believe and how that compels me to live - a complete self-examination from head to toe." With that examination came a new awareness of the human condition; an awareness that is reflected in the songs on BEHIND THE EYES. From the social observations of "Nobody Home," a bittersweet tale of an economically devastated ghost town, to the pleading anthem "Turn This World Around," inspired by an encounter with a homeless man in a Santa Monica park, Grant's inner voice shines through. "The sense of connection in the human experience is the crux," says Amy about the new album. "The hunger and longing every one of us knows inside/Can be the bridge between us if we tried" may well sum up the album's humanitarian themes.
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