Takes a Little Time

Album: Behind the Eyes (1997)
Charted: 21
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Songfacts®:

  • Behind the Eyes was released during a time of personal strife for Amy Grant, whose marriage to fellow Christian singer-songwriter Gary Chapman was nearing its breaking point. But the album reflects an optimism for a better future, evidenced in the hit track "Takes a Little Time."

    Grant wrote the song with Wayne Kirkpatrick, a Louisiana-born musician and songwriter who went on to produce the country act Little Big Town. Grant empathizes with the listener's pain and points out that in time things will turn around.
  • In an interview with Weekly Wire, Grant remembered writing songs for the album at Caribou Ranch in Colorado, where she recorded some of her earlier hits, during her 1995 concert tour.

    "I felt like I went back there and dealt with some of my old ghosts at a time when I was starting to lose my footing," she says. "I spent the night in this cabin I had stayed in many, many times. There was a full moon, it was freezing cold, and there was snow on the ground. I built a fire, and the first thing I wrote was the chorus of 'It Takes a Little Time.' I stayed in the cabin most of the next day and wrote the beginnings of six songs. It was so emotional for me. I got to the show that night just in time to go onstage and sing."
  • This also peaked at #9 on the Christian chart and #4 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
  • In a Songfacts interview, director Thom Oliphant explained how he came up with the concept for the video, which involves a magic camera: "I'd kind of geeked out on really old cameras, and there was a guy in New York that I had met who could retrofit these old '40s cameras and make them work for 4x5 Polaroid film, which is an expensive hobby, but a cool hobby. So some of that came out of that hobby. On a lot of things I would shoot, I would shoot 4x5 stuff, too, and I kept these picture books of journals and I was writing notes, and sometimes I used those pictures as scouting pictures.

    Amy saw one of those one day and thought that was pretty cool. So, well, let's just make that come to life, that'll be our thing. But what if everything the guy photographed turned into the alternate version of that reality and it came to life in a picture?"

    Oliphant revisited New York's Clock Tower Building, where he also shot Martina McBride's "Wild Angels" video, thinking it's giant interior clock space would be the ideal setting for a song about time. Despite being terrified of heights, Grant agreed to perform atop the 12-story building.

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