‘Listen To Your Body’: Musician Amy Grant Shares Health Update After Husband’s Heart Check-Up Saved Her Life (Exclusive)
The 65-year-old queen of Christian pop opens up about her new era of music and how writing is therapeutic for her
After a lifetime of living with an undiagnosed heart defect, singer and songwriter Amy Grant was told in 2020 that she needed to have life-saving open heart surgery. Now, the six-time Grammy winner is gearing up to release her first new studio project in 13 years.
Since her diagnosis, Grant has become a spokesperson for the American Heart Association (AHA) and an advocate for women’s heart health, encouraging everyone to get their heart checked. Woman’s World sat down with Amy Grant to discuss her health journey, partnership with the AHA and how writing new music has been therapeutic for her.
Woman’s World: You were diagnosed with a rare congenital heart defect in 2020, partial anomalous pulmonary venous return (PAPVR), after going years without knowing about it. How did you discover you had it?
Amy Grant: Unbeknownst to me, I had a birth defect that had grown into a near-catastrophic situation. I never would have known, but I went to the doctor with my husband to get test results from a stress test—he was getting winded going up stairs and his father had died young—so, Vince [my husband] was going and I went to hold his hand. And everything was clear.
Woman's World Answers
Then, the cardiologist looked at me and said, ‘I want to run some tests on you.’ I said, ‘I’m the Energizer Bunny. I have a freakish amount of energy.’ And later on, he told me only twice in his career, he’s felt an impulse to push, and I was one of those two occurrences where he felt compelled to [say something].
I got a call the next morning and he said, ‘You have a situation. You’re fine, fine, fine, and then it will be catastrophic, and we need to do open heart surgery before the end of the year.’ It was a birth defect that had finally exhibited. I had just finished a tour and a residency, and by the end, I felt like I was suffocating trying to get through my songs. My heart had enlarged, but it never occurred to me that it was my heart. I thought if the American Heart Association is trying to reach a community of women that would never go get their heart checked—and I could have been a casualty—so, I felt like all of us hard-working women, mothers, grandmothers… we don’t really take the time to take care of ourselves.
WW: You’re opening for this year’s AHA Red Dress Collection Concert—what does your involvement mean to you?
AG: I’m so glad to be celebrating the community that is reaching women to say we have to take care of ourselves. And I’m so glad to be a part of that collective voice.
All anybody knows is the experience of your own body. You can’t feel what somebody else’s interior feels and I think it’s important to listen to your body. When I was a little girl, we’d do all these fitness tests and I knew that if I had to exert myself in any way, my heart rate immediately went to 210. My whole life, I compensated for that, but it was because my birth defect kept the oxygen from circulating throughout my body. So, whatever your experience is with your own body, it’s all you’ve ever known.
Women just buckle in for the ride and there are times in life you feel like you’re drinking out of a fire hose. You’re taking care of everybody else and you’re trying to get to work on time and the thought of putting any of that on hold and taking care of yourself sounds crazy.
WW: Many women are indeed so quick to push their symptoms to the side, but we need to start taking care of ourselves and putting ourselves first.
AG: That’s right. I’m so grateful that what I had was very dramatic, but it was actually fixable. After my open heart surgery, I remember going for a walk and I was still sore, but hiking up the hill and breathing, I said, ‘Is this what breathing is supposed to feel like?’ I could have been breathing like this my whole life. Not everything’s fixabl,e but we can be aided to make something better.
WW: You’re releasing new music this year. How would you describe this era of music and songwriting?
AG: I’ve been touring for over 40 years, but in the last stretch of time, I have been singing the old songs. Several things have happened in the last five years: We all went through the shutdown, then I had open heart surgery and then I had a really catastrophic bike accident with a head injury. I had subsequent surgeries from that and lots of recovery time. I found myself saying life looks different at 65 because of my journey, so what if I started writing about that?
Two summers ago, I started writing songs again and I wound up working with a lot of musicians and it just created some new working relationships. And then I said, “I think I’ll record these two songs and then these four songs,” and all of a sudden, I had a record. The record has been finished since last summer. We just put out the first single on January 6th called “The Sixth of January.”
WW: Your first new studio project in over a decade!
AG: Thirteen years. How you spend your time and energy and creativity matters because it’s not endless. I was doing other things that really mattered to me and I forgot how therapeutic writing is. Just to get out how you feel and work through it. I just couldn’t be happier. It’s a great stretch of life and I’m still writing. I don’t know why I quit, but I did, and now I’m doing it again.
WW: If you could describe your new music in three words, what would they be?
AG: I’m a witness.
WW: That’s beautiful. Let’s quickly touch on the fact that your #1 song, “Baby, Baby,” is turning 35 this year! What has that song and its success meant to you?
AG: Well, it definitely took my music to a larger platform. I wrote that song about my daughter, Millie, and now she has two kids, so now when I sing “Baby, Baby,” I’m singing as a grandmother. I have great memories with that song. And I still sing it.
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Woman's World does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.
