MICHAEL W. SMITH : A Brave New ‘World’ for Onetime Gospel Star

For the most part, Michael W. Smith’s gold album “Change Your World” is pretty mainstream pop fare, with only a few of the 11 numbers even hinting at Smith’s former status as a gospel music star. It’s a record full of jumpy, mostly danceable, all-positive pop tunes with themes universal to just about all young listeners of any spiritual stripe: loneliness, media pressure, racial prejudice and, of course, true love.

It wasn’t always that way.

“I remember when I was doing the album ‘Eye 2 Eye’ back in ‘88,” Smith says. “I had a great love song for my wife and I didn’t put it on the record because I thought, ‘It won’t work in the Christian market.’ I could kick myself, because my wife deserves a whole record of love songs.

“And all I feel like I’ve done since then is just grow a little bit. I feel like I’m more free. I can talk about anything I want, and whether I have eight songs about God or two songs about God, that’s not the point.”

If Smith’s growth seems to parallel that of another crossover smash, it’s not entirely coincidental. For a while, Smith had an image as “the male Amy Grant”--having played with her on many tours and co-written some of her top hits, not to mention sharing a similarly teen-friendly image and the same management.

Though they still work together some, Smith finally slipped off her coattails for good by scoring his own Top 10 pop hit, “Place in This World,” in 1991. Then People magazine named him one of the world’s “50 Most Beautiful People,” and he was awarded a trophy for best new artist in the adult contemporary field at the 1992 American Music Awards. The “newcomer” was grateful; never mind that since 1983 he’d been issuing a string of hit records in the ghettoized--yet profitable--contemporary Christian music market.

Geffen Records was responsible for his initial pop success--though Smith is now on RCA, since parent company BMG bought half of the label he spearheads, Reunion. A new single, “Picture Perfect,” has just gone out to Top 40 radio and will probably be followed by a duet he sang with Grant.

“I’m proud of where I came from,” says Smith, who headlined the Forum on a recent arena tour. “But I feel like I’ve always done pop music that’s very spiritual. And I couldn’t understand why my music wasn’t on pop radio.”