Songoftheday 1/28/21 - What's this walkin' through my door? I know I've seen the look before...

 

 

"Takes A Little Time" - Amy Grant

from the album Behind The Eyes (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart

Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #21 (one week)

Weeks in the Airplay Top-40: 15

 

Today's song of the day comes from Christian music phenomenon turned pop star Amy Grant, who had scored a pair of top-40 pop hits from her second secular album House Of Love with "Lucky One" and "House Of Love", the latter a duet with her future husband Vince Gill that reached the top-40 at the start of 1995.  The following year, Amy covered the 70s dream-pop classic "The Things We Do For Love" for the Ellen Degeneres movie Mr. Wrong, which went to #24 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary radio chart. In 1997 Grant returned with her next effort, Behind The Eyes. The lead track promoted to radio was the midtempo inspirational song "Takes A Little Time". Written by Grant with Wayne Kilpatrick, who produced it with Keith Thomas, the song's lyrics read like a string of plaques you can buy for your wall at Home Goods with sayings on them, over a chord progression that seems just a bit cribbed from Steve Miller's "The Joker" for some reason. For me, it just seemed a bit milquetoast over her previous hits, which at least had some production heft to them, but aiming for the adult market did continue her success...

Since "Takes A Little Time" wasn't released as a commercial single (most likely to goose album sales), it wasn't able to place on Billboard's official Hot 100 pop chart. However, the song got enough radio love to reach the top-40 of the airplay component of that tally in November of 1997. The track did much better on "easy listening" stations, rising to #4 on the Adult Contemporary radio chart and #15 on the Adult Top-40 format list (her sole hit there). Internationally, the single went to #13 in Canada. The Behind The Eyes album actually became Amy's highest-ranked non-holiday record, peaking at #8 and going on to sell over a half million copies.

Grant's follow-up song from Behind The Eyes would be "Like I Love You", which was a more interesting song (though I can't place where the acoustic guitar hook comes from), but ended up missing the pop chart, though it scored another Adult Contemporary top ten at #10. That was followed by "I Will Be Your Friend", which topped out at #27 at Adult Contemporary. 

After a third Christmas album and a return to religious music on Legacy...Hymns and Faith, both of which made the Billboard 200 sales chart's top-40, Amy came back with her most recent secular set Simple Things in 2003. However, even though the album reached the top-40, title track "Simple Things" again missed the pop Hot 100 while stalling down at #23 at Adult Contemporary, her deal with A&M Records to distribute and promote to mainstream audiences ended after a Greatest Hits collection that spun off one more AC radio hit in "Come Be With Me" with blues artist Keb Mo (#32 AC).  By that time though it was easier to get Christian music into record stores, and she's since put out three more gospel albums as well as another holiday set, Tennessee Christmas in 2016, which is her most recent studio album, which returned Amy to the Billboard 200 top-40 at #31. Also, in 2014 Amy's label Sparrow released In Motion, a collection of remixes of her older hits, with reworks of "Baby Baby" and "Every Heartbeat" both reaching Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. 

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Here's Amy performing the song live on The Today Show to promote the album...

and lastly, live in concert in 2007...

Up tomorrow: R&B group takes us to the promised land.