Amy Grantwas in recovery mode.
After two surgeries followingher July 2022 bike accidentthat caused traumatic brain injury, she was cleaning out spaces and closets in her Franklin, Tennessee home when one of her daughters asked, "What is your creative space in the house?"
Grant realized, "I've never had a room where I could close the door in this house."
So, shetells USA TODAY, she went upstairs and "cleaned and cleaned and cleaned" and when she was finished, instinct kicked in.
"I picked up a pen and wrote a poem, 'The Me that Remains.' I was still recovering. I wasn't thinking about writing and my short-term memory was a struggle at the time. It was so hard to write music because I couldn't remember a lyric I'd written five minutes earlier."
Grant, 65, resolved her limitation by reaching out to longtime friend,Mac McAnally, a Nashville institution as a musician, songwriter and producer.
In January 2025, the pair convened in a studio with a couple of outlines from Grant, meeting every few months throughout the year to work on more songs until "Mac said, 'Hey! We've got a record!'," Grant recalls with a laugh.
Amy Grant shares details of her new album
The finished product takes its name from that poem Grant penned in her room upstairs – the title track "The Me That Remains." The 10-song album, arriving May 8, is Grant's first collection of all-original songs in 13 years (the faith-based "How Mercy Looks From Here" landed in 2013).
Advertisement
In January, Grant released what became the first song on the new album, the breezy folk-pop nugget, "The 6th of January (Yasgur's Farm)," which she told USA TODAY at the time invited people to "sit with unrest."
Along with teaming with McAnally, who produced the record, Grant shares her warm voice – now tinted with the huskiness that comes with age and wisdom – on profoundly personal songs withhusband Vince Gill("Friend Like You") and daughters Sarah Cannon and Corrina Gill (album closer "The Other Side of Goodbye").
Grant fans will also thrill at the revelation that career-long musical partnerMichael W. Smithalso joins the tracklist on the redemption study, "The Saint."
"I was going, this feels so good!," Grant said of the yearlong recording process. "I'm reengaged in a community that is filled with joy."
To celebrate "The Me That Remains," Grant will hold an album release show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville May 9. Tickets go on sale Feb. 27 viaamygrant.com. She's also playing a spate of dates in February and May, with the Ryman show wrapping her plans for now.
Amy Grant is 'not trying to turn the clock back'
Grant doesn't camouflage theemotional and physical distressshe's endured since her accident as she sings on the title track, "Life cut me wide open / When my head hit the ground / Wasn't my time for dying / Guess my soul just stuck around."
She's also realistic that her nearly 50-year career as a contemporary Christian supernova that detoured into unprecedented mainstream success with her 1991"Heart in Motion" albumand the pop hits "Baby, Baby," "Every Heartbeat" and "That's What Love is For," was a lifetime ago.
"This is not the music business of the 1990s. There has never been a noisier world and I harbor no illusions," she says. "I'm not trying to turn the clock back, but this is music that feels comfortable to me. Life does present you with all kinds of weird things."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Amy Grant is back after injury with first new album in 13 years