Making a holiday album might not be a particularly rare endeavor in the music world, but Vince Gill’s and Amy Grant’s Christmas album promises to stand out among the rest as a touching testament not only to their decades-long career but also to how the two musicians came to fall in love.
When I Think of Christmas, set to release on September 13, 2024, is a musical culmination of both Gill and Grant’s holiday catalogs, record-breaking residencies at the Ryman Auditorium, and a relationship that started with a chance encounter of a Christmas song playing on the radio.
Vince Gill and Amy Grant’s Touching Album Promo
If anyone needed any more reason to believe Vince Gill and Amy Grant are one of the cutest musical couples around, they need not look further than the July 2024 press release the artists shared ahead of their When I Think of Christmas release date.
“There’s nothing in the world that I love more than watching my girl shine,” Gill wrote, “and she might shine the brightest when she does Christmas music. We have shared stages together for over 30 years, and I’ve loved every note of it. I hope everyone enjoys this collection of songs and hearing Amy shine.”
Grant, nicknamed the “Queen of Christmas Music” for her extensive and highly popular holiday repertoire, shared similar sentiments in her seasonal musings. “Christmas Music is a portal to wonder and awe, to nostalgia and ‘remember when,’ to hope and how we wish it could be. And because we return to the same playlists year after year, those songs have become the backdrop for our collective memories of gathering, of family, of gift giving, of celebration, and solitude.”
The Album’s Connection to the Duo’s Marriage and Career
Vince Gill and Amy Grant’s Christmas album promises to be more than just a timeless collection of holiday classics (although it’s certainly that, too). Christmas music is also what initially drew Gill to his future wife. On an episode of the WSM radio show I Played the Ryman, Gill recalled the pivotal moment of hearing Grant sing “Tennessee Christmas” on the radio while he was in the car.
“I heard her voice, and I pulled the car over,” he recalled. “I said, ‘There’s something in that voice. It’s connecting to me,’ and little did I know how much.” The Christmas season would connect the two musicians again in the winter of 1993 when Grant joined Gill on his televised holiday concert “Christmas with Vince Gill.” She later said of the collaboration, “I was just captivated with his personality. I just thought he was a great guy” (via Fox News).
Their close connection to and lifelong love of the Christmas holiday eventually led to Gill and Grant, who married in 2001, establishing a yearly Christmas residency at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium. The musical duo became the first artists to play 100 shows at the Mother Church when they performed their 13th annual holiday concert series in 2023. Their 14th annual residency kicks off on November 29, 2024, and we expect their set list will include multiple, if not all, the cuts featured on When I Think of Christmas.
Photo by MediaPunch/Shutterstock
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