By Natori Moore

A lot can change in 25 years.  Just ask Amy Grant, the popular singer-songwriter who began her musical career in 1977 on the Myrrh/Word Christian record label.  As an earnest young musician on her trek up the gospel music charts, Amy inspired many with hit songs such as “ My Father’s Eyes,” “Lead Me On,” and “El Shaddai.”  She earned numerous Grammy and Dove awards for her records, and in 1985, became the first gospel artist to achieve certified sales of more than one million copies of a single album, her platinum selling Age to Age. 

By the year 2000, Amy Grant’s life would look different indeed.  Not that her fundamental identity as a Nashville musician, wife and mother would change much.  But she would have a broadened, genre-crossing music career, a new husband in musician Vince Gill and an additional baby at age 40.  She probably never guessed that life could come to hold such richness and breadth, nor realized ahead of time the painful price she and others would have to pay along the way. 

JUPITER AND NEPTUNE

AMYS CHART.  Though we don’t have a timed birth chart for Amy, I have constructed a speculative rectification of her chart to 8:00 p.m. based on her life events.  Amy’s birth chart reflects the optimism and spirituality for which she is known.  Her Sun falls in the inspirational fire sign, Sagittarius, and her Moon in the idealistic water sign, Pisces.  Both signs share a common traditional ruler in the wise and generous planet Jupiter. 

Jupiter often stands out in charts of people with strong faith as well as high cultural standing or noted service positions in their communities.  Amy comes from a deeply religious and comfortably well-off Nashville family with a background in medicine (her father and grandfather have been doctors).  Her father and uncles were among those who gave her an original boost of good luck with financial backing to establish her music career.  She has had a more privileged upbringing than many gospel singers, and yet has been able to tap into a sincerity of expression and modern style that helps many gain encouragement and celebrate their faith. 

Another strong influence in Amy’s chart is the planet Neptune.  Neptune rules Amy’s Pisces moon, and conjoins the mental planet Mercury in her chart.  This is a wonderfully classic placement for a musician and songwriter, as it can give heightened intuition and an almost supernatural ability to tap into realms of beauty beyond the norm in expressing feelings and insights. 

NEPTUNE’S SWAMP

On the down side, a Pisces moon and a strong Neptune can contribute to Amy’s being deeply impressionable and even naive, at times following what others want simply because they are in her environment and encourage her to do so.  The on-again, off-again courtship of Amy and her first husband Gary Chapman in the early 1980s suggests that she may have let herself be persuaded to marry him more because of his enthusiasm for the idea rather than her own. 

Pisces/Neptune-influenced people may also not be fully aware of their own desires and goals, and therefore easily led by others.  Amy has said that even though she also loved and had written pop songs early in her career, she gravitated toward recording Christian music because someone said, “We want you to do a Christian album.  You have a knack for expressing this.” 

PLUTO CONTACTS THE SUN

In late 1996 and throughout 1997, Amy experienced the transit of the planet Pluto to her natal Sun in Sagittarius.   Pluto transits often expand our psychological boundaries and push us into broad scale changes we never imagined we would make.  Big changes in Amy’s identity and relationship with her husband were about to become likely, since the Sun in a woman’s chart can symbolize these important areas. 

During this time, Janis Gill divorced her husband Vince over his refusal to cut his ties of friendship to Amy Grant.  Vince and Amy had known each other as musical collaborators since 1993, and claim that they remained only friends.  Yet Amy and Gary were struggling in their marriage at this time, too.  Amy may unconsciously have hoped for Vince’s divorce, yet was likely unwilling to admit how much her presence in Vince’s life contributed to such an occurrence.  She was probably not sexually involved with Vince at this time due to the restraint of other chart factors, yet given her Pisces-Neptune temperament, she may have fallen into a back-door type of emotional dependency with him while they were both still married to others.  Pluto contacts the Moon >>