Depending on their tastes, record buyers are likely to have had one of two different reactions when they came upon the
Amy Grant compilation
Collection in its initial LP and cassette releases in the summer of 1986. General music fans, aware of
Grant, if at all, only for her 1985 Top 40 pop hit "Find a Way," may have wondered why this one-hit wonder deserved a best-of so soon. But contemporary Christian music (CCM) fans would have been surprised that it wasn't a double album. After all, over the previous eight years,
Grant had scored 22 hits on CCM radio according to CCM magazine, all but three of them in the Top Ten.
Collection, originally containing only ten tracks with a running time under 40 minutes (standard for the LP era), attempted to address both these constituencies, succeeding with one more than the other. For the general pop fan, it demonstrated that there was more where "Find a Way" came from. The album largely eschewed material from
Grant's first five albums, including only "Father's Eyes" from 1979's
My Father's Eyes. It was dominated by songs from
Grant's mature works
Age to Age (1982),
Straight Ahead (1984), and
Unguarded (1985), with one song from
A Christmas Album (1983). Those songs had all been CCM hits, but a longtime fan must have felt that they told only part of the story. And
Collection looked forward as well. Each side of the LP led off with a new song, "Stay for Awhile" on the first side and "Love Can Do" on the second. Neither song had religious content (though both became CCM hits); both were very much in the synth pop style of
Grant's recent music. So, for the most part,
Collection satisfied
Grant's new fan base while tossing a bone to the faithful. [The original cassette version added five tracks, only one of which, "All I Ever Have to Be," came from
Grant's early recordings. A 1990 CD reissue added two more early tracks, giving the album better balance.] ~ William Ruhlmann