The Great Adventure

Another Flashback Friday... Its hard to talk about contemporary Christian music artists of the 80's and 90's without mentioning Steven Curtis Chapman. We still hear plenty of new music from him (I featured a new song from him for Father's Day), so it is easy to forget that he has been writing and performing music since 1987. He has not only written a lot of hit songs for other CCM artists, he has released over 25 albums and has more awards than any other Christian music artist in history with 5 Grammys, 59 Dove awards, and 7 "Artist of the Year" Dove Awards. He has sold more than 10 million albums and has 10 Gold or Platinum albums.

With this many hits, it is hard to feature just one song, but I think that one of his greatest successes was the release of The Great Adventure in 1992. This album and its title song was one of the first Contemporary Christian songs to become successful with a mainstream audience and really skyrocketed him to success. 

One of his biggest crossover hits was Cinderella, which was released in 2007 and written for his daughters. Tragically just months after writing this song his 5 year old daughter was killed in an auto accident involving his son. After the accident, the song took on a whole new meaning for the Chapman family. While the song had originally been written as a message to love and cherish parenthood while it lasted, it acquired another message of the frailty of life and how suddenly it can change. After his daughter's death, Chapman had said he was "pretty sure [he] would never sing the song again". On July 11, 2008 while singing on stage, he felt God talking to him through all his songs, confronting him. Chapman felt that he needed to believe in the hope he proclaims in his songs, and bring that hope to others by singing the song.

I'm sure you remember this...