I love iTunes 4.7 and DSL internet. 2004 is the year I stepped fully into my own digital music revolution. Finally updating to OS X and broadband access and the mobile iPod has caused me to rediscover so much music buried deep in my CD closet. Last month I spent the better part of a day ripping my Christmas music CDs into iTunes, creating an Xmas folder for party shuffle that will play ten times longer than the five-CD carousel shuffle ever could.

It's a tender Tennessee Christmas, the only Christmas for me.

A day spent brushing up on Elvis, Bing, the Chipmunks, the Beach Boys — hell who hasn't recorded a Christmas album? But each year, without fail, my most cherished Christmas album is a 1983 release, simply titled A Christmas Album by Amy Grant. From my cassette copy in 1985 to the CD purchase in 1994 to right here on my computer hard drive 2004, this album has aged with me.

I believe that angels sang, and hope had begun; when the god of glory who is full of mercy sent his sun. Love has come for the world to know as the wisemen knew such a long time ago.

A quick glance at any record shop and you can see she's not the only one who's recorded more than one Christmas album. But this was her first. Amy was just entering the pop world in the early 80s after breakout success in (and widely acknowledged for spawning) the Christian Contemporary rage. This album was bookended by her breakthrough Age to Age album and the huge debut pop success duet with Peter Cetera.

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given. So god imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.

What's so amazing about this lost little gem of a Christmas album is its sequencing. Too many records are so badly sequenced, I find myself starting with track four, jumping to eight, then finally to the first track and so forth. I re-sequence almost every album I own (even the Beatles, baby.) But Amy and her long time producer and friend Brown Bannister have gotten this one perfect. Even standing the test of years and years of repeats. Nothing attests to this more than driving from Chicago to Philadelphia each winter break with Amy's cassette on repeat in the dashboard deck.

Time never changes the memory the moment his love first shone through me. My precious savior is more than an heirloom to me.

Track three's instrumental ditty leading into Michael W. Smith's new composition of "Emmanuel" is the perfect follow-up to the opening auto-biographical, original-and-now-classic "Tennessee Christmas" which feeds into a new arrangement of the carol classic "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." A perfect blend of classic Christmas carols, religious songs & original holiday compositions, the album's tracking is so perfectly placed, complimenting beautifully simple production layered with the most perfect earth mother voice.

A perfect ending to a perfect day, we'll be singing the songs we love to sing without a single stop.



Copyright © 1998-2006 TheSimon.com
View this story online and more at: http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/diamond_in_the_rough/0705_amy_grant_a_christmas_album.html