'We Weren't a Bunch of Billy Grahams'

But after what she calls "the toughest four years of her life," Grant is back to the business of writing and recording songs. Her new album, "Legacy," mostly her renderings of traditional hymns, celebrates her 25th anniversary as a singer. A collection of new songs is due in the fall. In a recent interview with Beliefnet about her career and Christian music today, Grant came across as a confident and seasoned artist, who seems well aware of what she's accomplished in her quarter-century as a songwriter and a Christian--even if she won't admit it.

My brain just doesn't go that way. One night this week, two friends who have known me since childhood call me to tell me they'd seen Lifetime Television's intimate portrait about me. Both said to me, "You were working so hard that whole time and none of us really even thought about it!" I don't sit around and think about my influence.

[Laughs.] The people I've been exposed to have been people of amazing integrity. Do I think all contemporary Christian music is good? No. There are a lot of records I'd buy, and a lot I listen to and say, "Ugh, that's popular?" But I think that's true of country, or pop. There are records that just hit a nerve. That doesn't mean it has to hit my nerve.

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