Surrender (1983)

Joel Caballero
Mar 21
3 min read

Updated: Mar 21

Surrender is the seventh studio album by American singer Debby Boone. It was released around October 1983 by Lamb & Lion Records with distribution by Sparrow Records. The album was produced by Brown Bannister.

In early 1981, Boone released her last mainstream country album Savin' It Up, which contained two minor singles, "Perfect Fool" and "It'll Be Him." After that release, Boone focused on Christian music again with Surrender. It served as a proper follow-up to her first Christian album With My Song, which won her a Grammy and a Dove Award. The album's sound is pop/adult contemporary, with a heavy emphasis on ballads. The lead single "Keep the Flame Burning" features a vocal duet with Christian musician and vocalist Phil Driscoll. It was an immediate hit on Christian radio and climbed to the Top 5 on the Christian music chart by March 1984. Boone also records a song written by Rich Mullins entitled "O Come All Ye Faithful." Boone also records the original recording of "Wounded Soldier," written by Reba Rambo and Dony McGuire (Steve Green later covered the track on his 1984 self-titled solo album). "Can You Reach My Friend" was the second single and was written by Billy Sprague and Jim Weber.

Surrender climbed to number 7 on the Billboard Top Inspirational Albums chart by May 1984. Also in 1984, Boone won her second and final Dove Award for Gospel Album of the Year by a Secular Artist at the 15th GMA Dove Awards. A year later in 1985, Boone won her third and final Grammy Award for Best Gospel Performance by a Duo or Group for "Keep the Flame Burning" with Driscoll (his first and only Grammy win) at the 27th Grammy Awards.

In 1984, Boone co-starred in the television movie Sins of the Past, in which she played Clarissa Hope, one of the former call girls when she and four other girls left the business and reunited 15 years later only to find out when one of their own is murdered and rest realized that they are all being tracked by the same serial killer. In one of the scenes, Boone's character Clarissa (who is, in the movie, an evangelical singer) performs "O Come All Ye Faithful" taken from the album. It was broadcast on the ABC television network on April 2, 1984.

Curb Records currently is now the distributor of Surrender on CD since 2008.

Track listing

1. O Come All Ye Faithful (Rich Mullins) -4:09

2. Keep the Flame Burning (vocal duet with Phil Driscoll) (David Baroni, Connie

Nelson) -4:42

3. Can You Reach My Friend (Billy Sprague, Jim Weber) -4:09

4. Lift Him Up (John Rasasco, Russ Hollingsworth) -4:25

5. Wounded Soldier (Reba Rambo, Dony McGuire) -4:59

6. Surrender (Claire Cloninger ,Bill Purse) -3:35

7. Keep Rollin' On (Harry Browning) -4:07

8. Find a Hurt and Heal It (David Baroni, Niles Borop) -2:40

9. O Holy One (Marty Goetz) -4:13