Kennedy Center honoree Amy Grant on bike accident that left her unconscious: “It’s been such a gift”

“I do not keep in mind the wreck. I do not keep in mind the weeks proper after that,” singer-songwriter Amy Grant mentioned a few unhealthy bike accident that knocked her unconscious for practically ten minutes.

The autumn, which occurred in July of this 12 months, compelled the six-time Grammy-winner to cancel a fall tour and wrestle, at instances, to recollect the traces to her songs – and even the names of a few of these closest to her.

“It began off simply making an attempt to recollect names of individuals in my household,” she mentioned. “Loads of sentences would begin off, ‘Are they lifeless or alive?'”

However she known as the accident a present. 

“Since 2020, I’ve simply been flirting with demise proper and left,” Grant mentioned. “The three issues I stored saying time and again: ‘I can not imagine I’ve all my tooth.’ ‘One thing’s unsuitable with my shoulder.’ And ‘I wanted this,’” she mentioned, referring to the bike accident. 

“I take into consideration how, like, what vitality do I’ve left, and the way would I like to make use of it in another way? And it has been such a present,” she mentioned. “And actually the present is: I liked music earlier than anyone was listening, I wrote songs as a result of they helped me perceive life, and like I wakened saying, ‘I nonetheless have that very same toolkit, and I believe I’ve another good document in me.'”

Today, Grant is not taking something as a right, filling a ebook along with her personal recollections after the unhealthy bike crash. And when Grant invited Vladimir Duthiers and “CBS Mornings” to a preview of her upcoming Christmas present, she revealed she struggled, at first, simply to recollect some phrases to classics like “Winter Wonderland.”  

“It has been a extremely sluggish season,” she instructed CBS Information. “I have been on a treadmill going about 0.5 mph, like I am merging onto interstate site visitors.'”

Her return is bringing Grant not simply again to the stage, but in addition to one of many nation’s largest spotlights: the Kennedy Middle Honors. This month, she was acknowledged as a Kennedy Middle honoree.

Grant has bought greater than 30 million albums, and her music has been streamed a couple of billion instances around the globe. But, the multi-platinum artist by no means needed to make it to Nashville; Grant grew up there. 

“My dad and mom liked music, however I believe all of us kind of took the perfunctory three-to-four years of piano from the girl down the road. We did sing in church. And we’re a kind of households that went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night time, Wednesday night time. I can’t keep in mind one sermon from one preacher. However I keep in mind the music,” she mentioned.

And Grant remembers listening to these hymns made her suppose: “God, you may do with some good PR right here!”

So, at simply 15, Grant reached her first mountain prime, with the discharge of her eponymous debut album.

Nonetheless so younger, she’s carrying her highschool ring on the album cowl. 

“A man that my sister had gone on a date with heard a duplicate of a cassette I had made for my mother and pop,” Grant mentioned. “And so they known as the document firm and performed that tape over the telephone. And he even mentioned, ‘She’s not that nice. She’s okay. She’s not that good, however she sounds honest.’ And I used to be. Yeah, I really feel like I grew up with my viewers.”

And Grant’s viewers rapidly grew. Quickly, she had the primary Christian album to go platinum, 1982’s “Age to Age.” And it did not take a lot time for her star to actually shine, with early ’90s crossover hits like “Child, Child,” off her bestselling album “Coronary heart in Movement.”

The music that some critics solid as “too attractive” for a Christian artist really was written whereas watching her personal child, Millie.

“I did not understand it was about your daughter,” Duthiers mentioned.

“Yeah, effectively, I imply, that is a wonderful thing about a music; it may be about something,” mentioned Grant.

It was an cute second on the thirty fourth Grammy Awards when Grant introduced her child out on stage. “From a mothering standpoint, to have a two-year-old up that late, phew!“

That “child” lately made Grant a grandmother.

Her 2013 album “How Mercy Appears From Right here” is devoted to Grant’s personal mom, who died from dementia, and options collaborations with a few of Grant’s favourite musicians, together with Carole King (“Our Time Is Now”), James Taylor (“Do not Attempt So Arduous”), and Vince Gill (“Higher To not Know”).

Grant and Gill wed in 2000. The couple’s mixed 28 Grammys crowd their residence studio cabinets – the latest one for his tribute “When My Amy Prays”:

Grant recalled accompanying Gill to a health care provider’s go to three years in the past: “And the heart specialist mentioned, ‘Hey, let me examine you out.’ And Vince was like, ‘Oh, she’s the Energizer bunny.’ And now I am going, ‘Thank God,’ as a result of I had a start defect, undetected, and he mentioned I’d have been lifeless by 62.”

Grant simply celebrated that 62nd birthday, after the “Each Heartbeat” artist had open-heart surgical procedure after which, that unhealthy bike accident that landed her again within the hospital. 

Amy Grant kicks off a collection of Christmas exhibits along with her husband Monday night time. And she or he is hitting the street within the spring to make up the tour she was compelled to cancel this fall.

Watch The 44th Annual Kennedy Center Honors December 22 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.

For more information: