Amy Grant Celebrates the 25th Anniversary of "Baby Baby" by Re-recording the Hit with Tori Kelly

Contemporary Christian artist Amy Grant's #1 crossover hit will be 25 years-old this year.  In celebration of this silver anniversary of this signature hit, Grant announced in a video on Friday that she will be releasing an updated version of her 1991 hit with Tori Kelly.

"Just going back in time wasn't enough. We needed to give some new juice to this old song," Gran explained.

"There's a pop artist that I love that wasn't even alive 25 years ago, but she's joining me on a new release of 'Baby, Baby' coming out April 29th...Miss Tori Kelly. And whew! We have stuck a rocket engine on that song," Grant concluded in the video. 

The music of the hit was written by Keith Thomas. Grant always knew the song would be a smash hit, and was begging Thomas to sing the song. He agreed with the only condition that the song's title must be "Baby Baby". Grant had a hard time writing the lyrics, because her early attempts to write a romantic-sounding lyric to a song with such title came off sounding like "some overgrown football jock with no vocabulary trying desperately to be romantic".

But one day, after having seen her six-week-old daughter Millie, she said to herself: "Oh, baby baby". As a result, the lyrics were written in about ten minutes in her kitchen. In the Heart in Motion booklet there are words: This song is dedicated to Millie, whose six-week-old face was my inspiration. Millie would also appear on stage during Grant's performance at the 34th Grammy Awards. 

"Baby Baby" was Amy Grant's biggest hit since her 1986 duet with Peter Cetera, "The Next Time I Fall." In the United States, "Baby Baby" became Grant's second number-one hit on the pop charts and her first as a solo artist, topping the Billboard Hot 100 (replacing Wilson Phillips' "You're in Love" from the top spot) and Adult Contemporary charts for two and three weeks, respectively.

It also made Grant the first Christian pop singer to have a number-one single in the United States. The single reached the Top Ten in ten countries, in addition to reaching #11 in Switzerland. In the United Kingdom, "Baby Baby" was the singer's first (and only) Top Five hit in that country, reaching #2 in the UK Singles Chart. "Baby Baby" went on to become Grant's biggest hit single and one of the most successful singles of 1991. 

Tori Kelly first came to prominence when she was only 14 through a series of songs she posted on YouTube. She independently released an EP in 2012, at 19, and, last June, put out her debut album, Unbreakable Smile, on Capitol, going to number 2 on the Billboard 200.

While the new version won't be out until April 29, Grant did play a small bit on a video she released announcing the new single.

 

 

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