Sharayah

"Sharayah" is a 1985 single by Christian music singer Amy Grant. It was released as the fourth and final single from her Unguarded album. The song did not achieve the mainstream success that the previous Unguarded singles had seen but still emerged as a major hit on Christian radio.

"Sharayah" is an uptempo, rock-styled inspirational song that features heavy use of the synthesizer and electric guitar. In the song, Grant addresses a close friend named Sharayah, a presumably fictional character who is experiencing a crisis of faith. Grant implores her friend to find salvation in God. However, the lyrics do not specifically mention God or Jesus.

Music video

Unlike "Find a Way" and "Wise Up", Grant's record label did not release a music video in support of "Sharayah".

Background

The lead single from Unguarded was "Find A Way". That song went No. 1 on the Christian music charts, but also gave Grant her first hit on pop radio (as well as the first-ever Contemporary Christian music song to chart on pop radio). The next two singles, "Everywhere I Go" and "Wise Up", continued Grant's newfound mainstream success and were released to both Christian and mainstream pop radio. "Sharayah" is similar to the previous singles in that it bears a distinctively 1980s pop/rock sound with inspirational lyrics. In 1986, Grant released her first compilation album, The Collection. Both "Find A Way" and "Everywhere I Go" were included, but neither "Wise Up" nor "Sharayah" made the cut. Grant included "Sharayah" on her next major tour after Unguarded, the Lead Me On World Tour, in 1988-89. In the years since, however, "Sharayah" has not endured as a staple of Grant's catalog and is rarely included in her concert set lists. To date, the song has not been included on any of Amy Grant's official compilation or "best of" collections.

Amy Grant

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Amy Lee Grant (born November 25, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, author, media personality and actress. She is known for performing contemporary Christian music (CCM) and for a successful crossover to pop music in the 1980s and 1990s. She has been referred to as "The Queen of Christian Pop".As of 2009, Grant had sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.

Early life

Grant is a great-granddaughter of Nashville philanthropist A. M. Burton (founder of Life and Casualty Insurance Company, eponym of Nashville's Life & Casualty Tower, WLAC Radio, and WLAC-TV) and Lillie Burton. Grant has acknowledged the influence of the Burtons on her development as a musician, starting with their common membership in Nashville's Ashwood Church of Christ.

Grant made her debut as a teenager, and gained fame in Christian music during the 1980s with such hits as "Father's Eyes", "El Shaddai", and "Angels". In the mid-1980s, she began broadening her audience and soon became one of the first CCM artists to cross over into mainstream pop on the heels of her successful albums Unguarded and Lead Me On. In 1986, she scored her first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 song in a duet with Peter Cetera, "The Next Time I Fall". In 1991, she released the blockbuster album Heart in Motion which became her best-selling album to date, topping the Billboard Christian album chart for 32 weeks, selling five million copies in the U.S., and producing her second No. 1 pop single "Baby Baby".