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Better Than a Hallelujah Music Video World TV Premiere on GMC
Saturday July 31, 2010
Amy Grant Releases ‘She Colors My Day’ EP on iTunes
Monday May 11, 2009
Christmas with Amy and Vince 2008 Edition
Monday November 10, 2008
Amy and Smitty Celebrate On Ice
Monday November 10, 2008
Autographed Mosaic Books Still Available
Wednesday August 20, 2008
Amy Grant: Looking Back, The Interview Podcast
Thursday August 7, 2008
Out With the Old
Tuesday August 5, 2008
View Amy’s pictures in the Amy Grant Fan Gallery
Amy Grant In Concert, Volume 2 (1981)
Somewhere Down the Road (2010)
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In a recent interview, Amy Grant explains that she’s come to the point where she prefers to easily find familiarity when scanning around for music online or at the store. It was proposed by a guy from EMI, her current label, that instead of a collection of older songs with one or two new tracks thrown in, that there would be a melding of the past with a look to the future. Thus, her new album, Somewhere Down the Road, is a very different format than usual.
Out of 12 tracks, six are brand new and one is a reboot from her iconic Age To Age album. This may prove to bother those who already have every song that she’s recorded and their iTunes collection will again be littered by duplicate tracks, but this compilation is a definite must-have for her most loyal fans.
By far, the strongest song on the entire album is the opening track, Better Than a Hallelujah. This song was not penned by Amy herself, but she was overwhelmed emotionally the first time she heard it and was compelled to cover it for this record. The lyrics are powerful and transformative and the musical style fits in so well with Amy’s sonic aesthetic. It is right there at the top of the album for those wishing not to waste time getting to what will probably be this CD’s most favorited track. The sentiment of the words is so strong that as she sang it live for a group of contest winners at an Atlanta radio station, her voice cracked and then went silent as she struggled to get through the song without breaking down.
Overnight is a special song personally for Amy as she teams up for a duet with her daughter, Sarah Chapman. Sarah proves her singing capability with great ease, but with some timidness, much like her mom’s back at the dawn of her career in the late seventies. She then picks up the pace with Hard Times, a friendly, sympathetic adult contemporary pleaser and What Is the Chance of That, a rollicking, bluesy, country-styled tune.
Third World Woman relates the eye-opening experience she had as she traveled with her family to Africa and witnessed the devastating conditions of its people. Through this experience, she came to realize how she was a citizen of the world and not just an American. She also relates how faith in the midst of poverty is not corrupted by the trappings of politics as it is in the US, instead binding itself to hope.
Find What You’re Looking For is a lyrically compelling song, though the music itself does leave something to be desired. I guess you can’t bat a thousand every time at the plate.
There has always been a craving to hear Amy Grant’s 1982 hit, Arms of Love, done with full orchestration instead of the bare bones piano/voice duet. The original proves that a song doesn’t need all the bells and whistles of a full band to be considered truly great. But this is a nice, mellow rendition that is sure to please veteran fans from her ‘golden era’ during the Caribou years.
The other tracks are culled from her more recent albums, but they do follow the stylistic flow that is her current signature form in these latter years. There is a quiet maturity in this album, a far cry from her leopard jacket days back in the eighties, and it is fitting with someone whose career has followed the evolution of the contemporary Christian music scene from its nascent beginnings till now. As her loyal fans, we should be grateful that the teenager in the darkened recording booth has not let up and continues to deliver. And at ten bucks for the full album, it’s worth it to look back and still move forward into the future.
Track listing
1. Better Than A Hallelujah (3:42)
2. Overnight Featuring Sarah Chapman (4:24)
3. Every Road (4:29)
4. Unafraid (3:26)
5. Hard Times (3:01)
6. What Is The Chance Of That (3:27)
7. Somewhere Down The Road (5:08)
8. Third World Woman (3:01)
9. Find What You’re Looking For (4:25)
10. Come Into My World (3:25)
11. Arms Of Love 2010 Version (2:59)
12. Imagine/Sing The Wondrous Love Of Jesus Medley (5:19)
