GRAMMY AWARD WINNER FRANCESCA BATTISTELLI

Call it life feeding art. Call it truth in advertising. Call it a vintage Francesca moment. It happened as Francesca Battistelli was working on the follow-up to My Paper Heart, one of the most joyful and successful national debuts in recent memory, and it provides a telling glimpse into the mindset that makes her art so powerfully uplifting.

 

It's a dream she has long since fulfilled. Not only did My Paper Heart produce four major hits on the Christian charts—"I'm Letting Go," "Free To Be Me," "It's Your Life" and "Beautiful Beautiful"—but her music spread like wildfire on TV shows including ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, NBC’s The Biggest Loser, FOX’s So You Think You Can Dance, TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8, MTV’s The Hills and the Style Network's Running in Heels, on promos for the movie smash Julie & Julia and on the AOL Music home page, among many others. The release was the biggest-seller for a debut Christian artist in nearly a decade and the longest-running #1 for a female artist in Billboard Christian Album Chart history. It earned Francesca a raft of Dove Award nominations—she picked up the "Female Vocalist of the Year" and "Short Form Video" awards in April 2010—as well as a Grammy nomination en route to selling nearly half a million copies and three-quarters-of-a-million downloads