Amy Grant Returns With First Original Album in 13 Years, The Me That Remains

Amy Grant releases The Me That Remains, her first album of original music in 13 years, Friday, May 8 on Thirty Tigers. The record features Vince Gill, Mac McAnally, Ruby Amanfu, Michael W. Smith, and Grant’s daughters Corrina and Sarah Cannon.

In 2024 Grant cleared out a room in her Nashville home after her daughter Corrina asked, ‘Where’s your creative space?’ The room held paintings, art supplies, a collection of 45s and an old turntable. Corrina nicknamed it ‘craftopia’.

Grant last released an album of original songs in 2013. Since then she toured and faced major health events, including open-heart surgery in 2020 and a bicycle accident in 2022 that caused a traumatic brain injury. The title track grew out of writing she began in that cleared room. One lyric reads, ‘Life cut me wide open when my head hit the ground/ Wasn’t my time for dying.’

She says the first lyric felt like a poem and that short-term memory problems made music harder. ‘Lyrics were easy because it’s written down, but music is tough. So I said, ‘I don’t think I can do this by myself.’ But in a beautiful way, our limitations create our path,’ Grant says.

Grant reached out to collaborators. Vince Gill contributed. Michael W. Smith co-wrote a song called ‘The Saint’. Mac McAnally came in to produce and play. By January 2025 Grant returned to the studio intending to record only a couple of songs. McAnally later told her, ‘Hey, we’ve got a record here. We have 10 songs.’

The album mixes personal and social themes. ‘Til We Get It Right’ examines a long-term relationship. ‘How Do We Get There From Here’, written with Ruby Amanfu, was born from Grant’s participation in a group of artists who visited the Tennessee State Capitol after the 2023 Covenant School shooting. Grant and Amanfu traded texts for a year before finishing the song.

‘A lot of artists and songwriters were invited to go and just say, ‘Is there anything we can use our platform to help shift?’,’ Grant says of the Capitol visit. The collaboration with Amanfu aims at accountability, communication and grief rather than a single policy argument.

Vince Gill appears on ‘Friend Like You’. Grant’s daughters sing on the album closer ‘The Other Side of Goodbye’, a song that centers on Grant witnessing her mother’s passing in 2011. Grant says the day changed how she looks at death. ‘When somebody finishes their life, can we high-five them?’ she asks, describing a need to reframe endings.

The Me That Remains was finished months before its release. Grant and her team signed with Thirty Tigers for distribution. ‘I think we were trying to find a partner that was really interested in creating conversation,’ she says of choosing Thirty Tigers.

Grant says she does not expect another 13-year gap. She is working on songs and has received material from other writers. The Me That Remains arrives Friday, May 8.