Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Amy Grant

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

After decades of releasing new albums every few years, Amy Grant went mostly quiet for the past decade. In the time since her last album of original songs in 2013, she’s survived several harrowing medical emergencies. Now she’s back with a new album, “The Me That Remains.” She tells Rachel she felt she was doing her audience a disservice by not writing about this phase of life.To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Rachel. If you're in L.A., listen up because we're coming to town. And soon, on Thursday, May 7th, we're going to tape an episode of Wildcard live on stage at the Crawford in Pasadena. And the phenomenal Tracy Ellis Ross will be my guest. She's the kind of person who reminds you how much life is out there for the taking. There are still a few tickets left at LAS.com slash events. Come! It's going to be so fun. I'd love to see you there. What's something you've come to peace with? Time.

Time. If you're trying to create a lovely garden, which I am, that is what I'm truly trying to do at 65, for the first time, like soup to nuts beginning to end. And it's like, man, nature went. It doesn't matter how hard you work. There's so many things you can't control. The weeds will come back, but it's just like the joy in the process. That's got to be enough. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card.

The show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is Amy Grant. I'm just looking at all those people in the audience. A lot of them, you know, if they're not coloring their hair like I am, it's gray. And they're my contemporaries.

And I thought, am I doing us all a disservice? by not writing about what life feels like now. Lots of people have tried to tell Amy Grant who to be over the course of her music career. Sometimes the criticism comes from people who think she's singing about God too much. And sometimes it's from people who say she's not singing about God enough.

But as someone who has followed Amy Grant's career since I was a kid, singing her songs in church, to me she's always seemed like someone who knows exactly who she is and how she wants to live her life. She's out with her first new album of original songs in more than a decade. It is called The Me That Remains, and I am so very, very happy to welcome Amy Grant to Wildcard. Hi. Hi, Rachel. Who would have thought we would be here

doing the card game? It's very trippy for me. I mean, it is. Like, I sang my first church solo when I was seven, and it was your song, Father's Eyes, and it was like Father's Day. So it's like a very core memory for me, Amy. Oh, how'd you do? Like I've had your voice in my head my whole life. I mean, I think I did pretty well. Good. I think there were some tears in the house.

I think I really brought it. So, yeah. We're going to start with the memories round. I'm going to hold up three at a time. Okay. And we'll just get right into it, okay? I love this. I think you are going to love it.

All right, first three cards. One, two, or three. Okay, three. Three. When did you first find a group of peers who really understood you? I think I was born into a group of peers. I'm the youngest of four daughters. And so I just, I grew up just feeling community from the get-go.

You went to a, what you described as like a hippie church when you were in high school. I did. And that also felt for you like you were looking around and you're like, oh, this feels good to me in a different kind of way. This feels like it's comfortable in a way that maybe traditional church didn't feel like to you. Yeah, I think it just awakened my curiosity because, you know, I'm from the South. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and it's sort of, especially in the 60s and 70s, it was sort of a cultural. norm, most people went to church. And my family went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.

I can't remember what one preacher ever said, but the music. I just loved the music and singing and, yeah. And that's really kind of where my sort of spiritual and emotional mental framework came to for all things kind of unseen was from those songs. Yeah. But I think I just was born into a welcoming environment. And so I took the feeling of belonging for granted. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, belonging to a family or to a group, in my mind, it has nothing to do with everybody being the same. It just has to do with everybody being welcome. Yeah. Okay. Next three. One, two, or three. Okay. One.

One. What's a moment with a stranger that made you feel loved? Whenever there's some kind of transaction that has to happen, what I try to do is I try to see the other person. Sometimes I'll ask them their name. Or if somebody's kind in a service position, I mean, that just makes the world a better place. Doesn't it?

I know. That destroys me. Yes. So I was leaving the Nashville courthouse, and this was last Friday morning. And first off, you know, I'm not used to going downtown, even in Nashville, and like finding a parking place, not losing my parking ticket, finding my car in the garage, and then I'm getting ready to leave.

And I pull up and I give the ticket taker in the garage my ticket. And she just smiled at me. And I said, oh, man, a smile like that, that can change the next moment of the day. And I said, what's your name? And she said, my name's Val. And then she looked at me and she said, you're a singer. And I said, I am a singer. And she said, you're married to Vince Gill.

And I said, I am married to Vince. And she said, my son was in one of his junior golf programs years ago. Oh, no way. Yes. And she said, he got to play on a team. and please tell him and I said, thank you. And I said, tell me your son's name.

And I said, I will write it down and tell Vince. Yeah. But that was probably two decades ago. In the golf program. Him playing junior golf, yeah. And it just made me think, the longer you live, I mean, there's so much layering up of all of our lives. Yeah.

Yeah. But just seeing the people around you, to me, leads to something potentially good. And it's just there for the taking also, I think. That's low-hanging fruit. It is. It is. Just a smile. Anything.

Yeah. Last one in this round. One, two, or three. Two. Two. When have you felt like you turned a page in your life? How many pages do we have? Can, oh my gosh, I don't know.

Pick a page, Jenny page. Oh, man. I've turned a lot of pages in my life. May I flip this on you? Oh, sure. I don't think anyone's ever flipped this one on me. Yeah. I mean, the biggest page turn of my life, I think, it's fair to say, is when I decided to stop moving around and just be still.

And it was this very pivotal moment where I was. this very pivotal moment where I was offered a job to be this, the London, a London-based reporter for a television news network, but I just started to see this guy. And it really was this moment of what do you want in your life? Are you going to keep doing this thing where you just move and move and move and move? Or might you find out what it's like to just stand still and go deeper in one place and see what happens. And I chose to just stand still and turn the job down and see what was going to happen with this guy. And things worked out. And we have a lovely life and we have two boys. And it was a big page for me to turn because that's not how I'd been

operating in the world. And it's not who I thought I was. I thought I was this mover, mover, person. And then I realized that I could get so much, such deeper joy and satisfaction in my life if I just stood still and learned what could happen if I just went deeper. So I think that's mine. Man, that's beautiful. Thanks. So what's you got? Amy Grant. I'm going to think of one rather recently. So I've had a unique job of opportunity, I get to work, going to go and sing songs that I have sung my whole life, like some from when I was a teenager, my 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and now I'm 65. And I think without realizing it, I felt that I felt that I,

it was my responsibility to show up and deliver in a way that I had always delivered. And I think the page that I turned in the last, somewhere in the last 12 to 18 months is, and I did it because of a therapy session, but I went to a therapist who'd been a family therapist for several years, and I said, my inner critic is, I don't want to deal with this inner critic, you know, comparing me to a younger version of myself. And she said, I think you should, I think you should write a eulogy to the younger woman. This is beautiful. And so I did. And, you know, eulogy, unlike looking back over your past when your faults are as present as your,

Gifts. Ulogy, you know, you really just say the nice things. But something about that exercise, I really just basically bid farewell to that younger woman and said, I'm here, but I can't be her anymore. And it was just so lovely to celebrate that and go, I'm going to stop looking for what. I cannot find. Mm. Mm. And then discover all that is. Mm-hmm.

And that's really been a page turner for me. Let's push back from the game and talk about your album, because it's been a minute since you've put, you know, pen to paper metaphorically and came up with a body of work. Right. It was 13 years. So what was going on to make this happen? Well, life was always happening. I never quit touring. You know, 75, 80 shows a year. And then, well, you know, just from 2020, for about three years there, four years there, I just, we all had a lot going on, as did I. You should say, you had a very bad bike accident. I did. In 2020, of course, the whole world was shut down.

for COVID. And so I go see the doctor do a whole thing of tests, and then he calls me the next day and said, you know, you've got an undetected birth defect. You need open heart surgery. And so I recovered from that felt so much better. I was like, this is what breathing is supposed to feel like. This is awesome, because it was a birth defect. Wow. And so, and then two years, two years later, I had this bike accident that I don't remember, but, you know, two subsequent surgeries because of that. All that to say was I had to be very patient. Yeah.

With my body. Very patient with recovery. And I think all those things all went together to make me so glad to be alive. I mean, even this morning, I woke up and I was like, hey, I've got another day. All that undoubtedly affected also your creativity in some way. especially the brain stuff, no? Like, your ability to just conjure language, put it down, make songs. Did you feel that slip away for a few years?

I just felt the limitations of my processing in the – so the summer of 22 was a bike accident. And that fall, I mean, I spent several months of quiet, you know, no screens. I was not on the phone. Oh, man. And basically that, you know, end of July. August, September, October. I lived in my backyard with my shoes off in the grass, just writing. And just trying to recall things.

No, wait, not writing songs, just writing for the sake of trying to engage your brain. And it really wasn't until, you know, too. two years later that I started writing songs. I didn't realize I was putting together a record. I was just writing one song at a time. Yeah. And the Me That Remains was the first song. Yeah.

Yeah. I think I just remember in the fall of 2022 when my world was very quiet. I just remember saying DeVince, what if this is all I get back? what if this is it? And because to me, you know, it's like the world is in a conversation and I am down the hall and in a back bedroom. This is like my response time.

I love people making me laugh. I love delivering a great one-liner, but that doesn't happen when you're like three steps behind the rest of the room. Yeah, yeah. And so he just said, Amy, life happens to every one of us every day. A virtuoso musician could have a stroke and never be able to pick up their instrument again. All you do is you just take the hand you're dealt that day and live the life that you get.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think I started writing because, you know, I went back on tour and toured in 2023. But I'm just looking at all those people in the audience. A lot of them, you know, if they're not coloring their hair like I am, it's gray, and they're my contemporaries. And at some point I thought, am I doing us all a disservice by not writing about what life feels like now? Because you were singing songs that you had written decades before. Yeah, and the world looks different with time and age and life. All of us.

Yeah. Yeah. It must have felt so good to get in the studio and then sing these songs and lay them down. I felt some creative limitations. You know, I felt like I was rusty songwriting in a way. You know, so I would either finish a lyric or get started on it, you know. But I was a little freer reaching out to people I'd never worked with saying, hey, I've got this lyric, any chance you want to help me with the music.

because it was just hard for me a little bit to wrap my arms around the music part of it. But yeah, isn't it so freeing in some way to just be like, I'm releasing my expectations and I'm asking for help. Yeah. And then people rise to the occasion. Yeah.

Yeah. I want to ask about one of the songs on the album, the first one, is called the 6th of January. Before I listened, I was like, is that no? Amy Grant? No. Is she singing a song about January 6th? And I'll be damned you were.

Yes. I am. I was like just going right, just going right into it. Tell me about this song and why it was important to you. Oh, my goodness. I have loved that song from the first time I heard it. It was written by Sandy Lawrence. And she played the 6th of January for me.

me, and she had started the song 15 years earlier. And so she started it with the second verse. But then, you know, life happens and everything affects everything. And the 6th of January affected that amazing songwriter. And I loved everything about the song. I loved it just, it piqued my curiosity. Were you worried at all that any part of your audience was going to be like, this feels like Amy Grant's, like, straying out of her lane and, you know, go back to singing

about Jesus. I had a couple of musician friends that I work with, and they said, I don't think you should touch that one with it. And I said, I love everything about this. And I mean, I've always welcomed singing the. questions. I mean, I've always sung about unrest in my own life. I thought, why wouldn't I sing about unrest in our, within our culture? I mean, that's, it's happening at every end of the spectrum at all times. And when you talked about, I made the choice to stay put, to just be there,

to stay. And I think that we have to be willing to sit quietly in unrest, to not wave a banner, to not pick a team, but to say, where from here? And I think that that requires a kind of quiet on the inside. But you say you can do that without picking a team. You don't want to pick a team right now. You just want people to be still and listen to each other. I think there's always, in every scenario, there's something to be gained by listening

and by imagining what if our roles were reversed. And, you know, what if I were that. person with fewer opportunities. What if I was in that role? And so I guess that does require some imagining a lot of compassion. Yeah, that is worth it. This is round two. Three new cards. All right. One, two, or three. One. One. What have you found surprising about getting older? I don't think I want to say this in an interview. Sure you do. Sure you do.

Oh, man. Something surprising. Something surprising. Oh, my gosh. I actually enjoy moving my body more now than I do. than I think I did 10 years ago. There's something about, yeah, I actually love that about getting older. It's surprising to me how most of us move less and less the older that we get.

Yeah. In September, I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I had been on a walk with a musician friend who we tour together, Gene Miller, he's a guitar player. And he's all about fitness. He's always lifting weights. And he's like doing me through all these movements. He said, get barefoot on the grass. Yeah.

So I went back to my hotel room and I thought, fitness should not require a personal trainer, a membership to the Y, some kind of devices. And I'm just, out of curiosity, I said, what if I just like picked a couple of movements that put a smile on my face? What if I did these 100 times a day for 100 days? Would it be enough? And just the word, enough, when it's,

it came to any kind of effort like, oh, my, well, that feels like a lavish word. It feels enough. Anyway, so I thought, well, what makes me smile? Yeah. And so I wrote down these seven exercises, movements, I called them. And first day, I did a hundred in a row, and it was too much. And I thought, well, that's, I don't want to do that again. And then the next day, I tried splitting them morning and evening. And I thought, well, that's, I don't want to be that sweaty. And so the next day, I broke it up and did it four times, 25 repetitions before my first cup of coffee, 25 repetitions before I close my eyes. And two other random times during the day. Was it enough? About three weeks in, the sound engineer who mixes the house sound said,

what are you doing different? You're singing better. And I went, good. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. And by then, I was so, I was smiling every time I did it. It was not a chore. I renamed the movement, Child's play. And so I haven't missed a day since September 10th. Wow, good for you.

Yeah. And so, you know, it's just, I don't know. I think I just always, I was not that as intentional. Yeah. And I love that about getting older. Yeah. Thank you. It was a lovely answer.

Next three cards, one, two, or three. Three. Is the music you listen to happier or sadder than you are? Interesting. Like, both? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, music, God, what a great.

it's a great shoehorn to get you out of a bad mood. Yeah. For me, music, a lot of music that I am exposed to, not that I'm choosing on Spotify, but a lot that I'm just exposed to happens in my home because we have a studio in our home. Yeah. And so a lot of it is like an instrumental.

It could be, so it might be songwriters working on a song. So I make music, but I'm married to a musician who works every day and a songwriter who works all the time. And to me, here's what music does. It just like, it just peels you wide open. Yeah. And so whatever it's doing, it invites you there or it augments that you're already there, just whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, there's real liberation in that. Yes. Okay. one in this round. One, two, or three. How much do you rely on the validation of others? I think I am mindful that everyone is so different. Everybody, you know, my family, like my sisters, between my sisters and me and our spouses and the kids we've birthed and then their families, you know, a Thanksgiving or Easter, even if not everybody can show up, we're talking 60 people. And if everybody shows up and brings a few extra at 75, you know, and we all cook Easter, we had a super spreader vomiting virus.

It's like, oh my God, should we ever gather as a family again? But I think we're all different, you know, and it's like, I think it just makes me like, I think it just makes me like, I try to say to myself and I try to say to my children and my nieces and nephews and my siblings, you've got to honor what energizes you. You can't, you know, you're the only person that occupies that lane. Yeah. And it's so important to know what picks you up, but it's going to be different from anybody else. And so if you, you've got to be able to,

you've just got to be able to celebrate the things that fill your tank. Don't be looking for somebody else to go, woo-hoo, I'm exact same way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's less about approval. I mean, you know, it's really just about try to connect with yourself and let the, whatever space you're meant to take up in the universe, fill all that.

emerge with all of that beauty and purpose and just look at your unique life that way even if you don't even if you don't even if you don't even if you don't even even if you don't even know what is my purpose exactly but to know whatever it is it's unique to you Amy Grant we're at our last round beliefs one two or three um three

what truth guides your life more than any other It's a big one. We are loved. That's the truth. And so the lens, you know, what I was raised, I see so many things through a scripture lens. You know, for God so love the world. That's like nature, that's the environment, that's the people, loved.

And then the we is important. because one of my rituals every day is to say the Lord's prayer. It kicks right off. You know, when people were asking Jesus, how do we pray? He said, pray like this. And he was very simple. He said, our father, and I don't know that that had ever been used before. But it's like our, the people I agree with, the people with whom I disagree.

hour. Yeah. That person whose actions are turning me inside out is loved. It's loved. And we are connected.

So does that connection compel you to love that person? Because it's different to say this person is loved by God, the universe, whatever. But there's still a separation. Right. In that love, does it compel you to love that person?

Well, ultimately, that's what I hope for. Mm-hmm. And I think that I think love God and love each other is this, the instruction that I receive I've heard but it rings true in me like it's a beautiful answer

that's the truth that guides your life it is the truth that guides my life yeah one two or three two what's something you've come to peace with time time

Because, you know, if you're trying to create a lovely garden, which I am, that is what I'm truly trying to do at 65, for the first time, like soup to nuts beginning to end. Oh, an actual garden. An actual garden. Oh, an actual garden. Okay. Not just a metaphor for living. Yep. An actual garden.

Yeah, yeah. And it's like, man, nature wins. It doesn't matter how hard you work. Nature wins. I mean, you can just like, you can work hard, you can, and there's so many things you can't control. Mm-hmm. You know, the weeds will come back, the grass, you know, but it's just like the joy in the process is, that's got to be enough. Yeah.

Last one. One, two, or three. One. I'll take one. One. Have your feelings about God changed over time? Yes. I don't think God has changed. Mm-hmm. But I...

When I was younger, I just remember thinking, I've got to get all this right. My beliefs have to be right. Not right for everybody else, but I don't want to miss. This matters to me. Mm-hmm. and I don't want to be wrong. And it's not that way anymore? It's not, it doesn't feel like you have to be right or...

Oh, I know, I'm... I know so many times I'm a lost ball in high grass. I think what I, whatever my childhood understanding, whatever I pictured God to be, Now at 65, sometimes I will be in the backyard at night and I can't sleep. And I can't even wrap my head around. And so I can spend a lot of time taking a passage of like maybe verses I've memorized. from the Bible. And rather than just read them, if I memorize them, then I can, it feels like a

planetarium. I can get in the middle of them. I can let my head spin around it. I can, like, let every word just kind of float, and I feel like it gets bigger. And so it is fascinating to me to like take a section of these ancient words that are part of scripture. Yeah. And just like sing them and chant them and think about them and let my mind wander. And I just add all this imagination around them. And then I go, whatever I can imagine is coming from a finite human brain. And I'm supposed to like, and.

God and goodness and Jesus and love, all those things like, whatever I can think is not even a drop in the bucket. Whatever I think is like, no, swing and a miss. That's where it feels different. It's humbling, yeah. So, yeah. To feel small that way. Yeah. In a beautiful way to feel small.

Like all of us, every day I sit here and go, everybody's impact is enormous. And let's get real. Each one of us is like a white blood cell, a red blood cell in the body of mankind. We end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. Okay. In the memory time machine, you go back and revisit one moment from your past. It's not a moment you want to change anything about. It's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer.

It's fun. What moment do you choose? I'm not sure why this moment came to me, but my sister Carol, we had children within 24 hours of each other, and we were in the same hospital in rooms next door. Wow. And after everybody left, I sort of gingerly made my way to her to her hospital room, and I crawled up in the bed with her because we spent so much time

when we were kids sharing a bed or crawling each other's beds. And we laid the babies we had just had side by side, and all four of us were in bed. And just what we'd been through and what we'd, yeah, it was just like, what are the chances. that we could have shared that time. That's rare. Yeah. That's rare. Oh, my God, that's so beautiful.

What a gift of an experience. That's just wild. Yeah, I'd linger there. Amy Grant, her new album is called The Me That Remains. I am so thrilled to have gotten to do this with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

If you'd like this conversation, go back and check out the episode I did with another Nashville resident, Casey Musgraves. I especially loved how Casey described the plot of land she grew up on, the legacy of that place and the ghost stories that linger there. This episode was produced by Mitra Arthur and Lee Hale. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Becky Brown. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni, and our theme music is by Romteen Arablewe.

You can reach out to us at wildcard at npr.org. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then. Thank you.