I’ve written the digital equivalent of reams about the influence that the Christian music of the ‘80s and ‘90s has had on my life. That includes Amy Grant, who was my favorite artist for many years, as well as my pre-teen and teenage crush.
May 15 marks the 40th anniversary of “Unguarded,” the album that launched her career into the stratosphere and gave contemporary Christian music (CCM) a greater platform. Sure, songs with Christian themes had become hits in the past, from “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” to “Oh Happy Day.” Norman Greenbaum, who is Jewish, decided to write a gospel song, and “Spirit in the Sky” became his biggest hit (he later admitted that if he had known more about Christianity, he would have made the lyrics more theologically sound). But no song from a Christian record label had ever hit the top 40.
Grant was a long-time veteran of the music industry by 1985. She began her career while she was still in high school, and she had recorded five studio albums, two live albums, and a Christmas album by that time. With each new album, the production values increased, and Grant expanded her musical horizons.
The seeds for her most ambitious album sprouted when she and her husband, along with her songwriting partners, producer, and managers, went to see “Footloose” while on tour.
“This redemptive, fun-loving, dance movie just hit us all like a tsunami. I came out of there with such a hot vision and a calling of what we had to do next, and where Amy had to go next with her music,” Michael Blanton, one of her managers, recalled in the liner notes for the 30th anniversary edition of “Unguarded.” “I remember walking out of the theater, and looking at all these dear friends and saying, ‘We have got to make some music that allows Christian kids to have fun, and to dance with music that has more energy.’”
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Team Amy assembled an impressive group of songwriters, including Michael W. Smith, who was a solo artist as well; her then-husband Gary Chapman; the late Rich Mullins, who would begin his solo career the next year; and Chris Eaton, who went on to record a couple of brilliant albums of Christian Brit-pop. Grant co-wrote eight of the album’s 10 songs, although she rewrote “Everywhere I Go” as her version of Psalm 139 while maintaining Mary Lee Kortes’ solo songwriting credit.
Grant and her amazing band recorded several tracks at James William Guercio’s legendary Caribou Ranch studio in Colorado, and she was boarding a plane to fly back to Caribou to record more when she learned that the studio had burned to the ground. “Unguarded” was the last album recorded there.
It was a bold set of songs with a sound that was more of the moment than anything Grant had recorded before. The lyrics were less overt about Christianity than her previous songs, but that didn’t hide the faith behind them. Her label, Word Records, partnered with A&M Records to promote the album outside the CCM bubble.
The Word-A&M partnership required a cover that reflected the album’s remarkable style. Singer-songwriter Julie Miller (who is the subject of a future Underappreciated Albums column from me) worked as the stylist for the album, and the team found a leopard-print jacket in a store in Memphis that topped off the perfect outfit for Grant. As Grant danced to one of the album’s songs, the photographer snapped shots of several moves, and the team chose four of them for four separate LP and cassette covers. When the album came out on CD, one of those four covers became the most prominent one, but collectors took pride in getting their hands on all four.
A&M and Word chose “Find a Way” as the album’s first single. It was more of a rocker than anything Grant had done before, and some fans accused her of “selling out,” even though the song references Romans 8:32 in the bridge: “If our God, His Son not sparing, came to rescue you / Is there any circumstance that He can’t see you through?”
“Find a Way” hit radio, MTV, and VH1, and eventually made its way to #29 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the first time a song from a Christian record label made it into the top 40.
Grant defended the less overt religiosity of the album, telling the Los Angeles Times, “The Christian community is starting to understand that, yes, there are singers who only want to choose to sing for the church, and continue to exercise the lingo and promote the phraseology, but then there’s a group of us that say ‘I believe in Jesus, he’s changed my life, and I want to be a part of my culture.’”
CCM Magazine echoed that sentiment in its review of “Unguarded”: “Are we in this business to stroke the body [of Christ] or to take the message to a dying world? With Unguarded, Amy Grant takes the message where it's needed most.”
Critics hailed the album, and even a secular magazine like Esquire recognized that there was a place for Christian music in the larger industry. Mark Jacobson wrote in the magazine that even though Grant mentioned God or Jesus less in this set of songs, “it would be a mistake to assume this makes ‘Unguarded’ any less of a Christian record. Rather than being less Christian, it is as if Christian-ness permeates the material to such an extent as to make the mention of it redundant.”
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I’ll still never forget listening to “Unguarded” on cassette in my family’s pool, which was brand new. I was 12, and it meant a lot to me to listen to music that sounded like what I was hearing on the radio but reflected my Christian faith. It was even more impressive to hear “Find a Way” and the second single, “Wise Up,” on the radio. Two other singles, “Everywhere I Go” and “Sharayah,” made it onto Christian radio as well. I wore out that tape and read the liner notes voraciously. Grant included a sentence or two explaining what each song meant to her, which deepened my appreciation for them.
You’ll never mistake “Unguarded” for an album that came out in any year other than 1985, but it holds up well. Grant won a Grammy and a Dove Award for the album, and the success of “Unguarded” set the stage for further accomplishments in both the Christian and pop music realms. It also opened the door for other Christian artists to experience mainstream success, like Switchfoot, Sixpence None the Richer, and Jars of Clay.
Today, I celebrate the triumph of “Unguarded” and its legacy. Check it out in lossless audio if you haven’t heard it in a while or are listening for the first time:
