“Little Town” by Amy Grant, Thursday, December 22, 2022
YET IN THY DARK STREETS SHINETH. Then there's Amy Grant. The Contemporary Christian-pop crossover singer has recorded five Christmas records beginning with 1983's A Christmas Record and followed by 1992's Home for Christmas, which popularized the David Foster and Linda Thompson-Jenner holiday single "Grown-Up Christmas List." Grant's musical career started with the release of her debut record in 1977 when she was still a teenager. In the early '80s she mostly sang praise music and hymns, some of which had a distinctive sound of the day. Point-in-case, today's song "Little Town." The heavy synthesizers made my '00-teenage eyes role, but old Amy Grant wasn't played much on the CCM stations, but when I was listening to CCM radio, Grant was controversial for her high-profile divorce from fellow CCM singer and Weekly Top 20 CCM countdown host Gary Chapman. And Grant's biggest pop hits were from the '80s and early '90s. Grant's divorce was polarizing in late '90s CCM, causing the singer to lose fans and support. But Grant constantly comes back to pay homage to her Christian music past. She maintains a friendship with lifelong collaborator Michael W. Smith despite not always seeing eye to eye on social issues--Amy Grant is in the new again this week for another controversy setting her at odds again with her conservative listeners, this time it's hosting a same-sex wedding on her family farm with her husband Country singer Vince Gill for their niece. Franklin Graham is upset and Michael W. Smith, friend of both Grant and Graham, is yet to comment.
OUR LORD EMMANUEL. But tonight, I want to remember a Christmas pageant from ninth grade at Adventist school. Some how, our teacher had a disagreement with the church's choir director, so the teacher decided to put on a rival Christmas cantata, starring her students. For about a month classes were put on the back burner as we listened to extremely difficult arrangements of Christmas songs. I recall only three at this time, though: Ray Boltz's "The Perfect Tree," Point of Grace's insanely complicated altered time signature "Carol of the Bells" sung only by the girls--a few of them completely tone deaf--and today's song, awkward '80s Amy Grant and her version of "O Little Town of Bethlehem." If you know the hymn "O Little Town of Bethlehem," you know the melody and the naturally flowing lyrics. I can appreciate Amy Grant's version now because I've become a sucker for avant-garde '80s production as a musical palette as long as it doesn't take itself too seriously. But in the '00s, the '80s were fashion suicide. We hated this song. We hated singing for eight hours a day. Our throats were sore. We were getting sick. And yet, it was kind of great not studying algebra for a month.
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