Genre: Pop/Rock
For fans of: Aaron*Jeoffrey, Steve Green, Michael W. Smith
Label: Reunion Records

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It was six years ago that Clay Crosse began a musical journey that quickly propelled him into the spotlight. Clay's debut album, My Place Is With You, introduced his extraordinary voice to an eager audience, and garnered the attention of the entire Christian music industry. It was not long into his career before Clay captured a Dove Award for New Artist of the Year, and subsequent nominations for Male Vocalist of the Year. While songs like "I Surrender All" and "My Place Is With You" provided a solid base for Clay's success, his first four albums produced no less than eight #1 singles. Included in that roster are CCM's 1997 Adult Contemporary Song of the Year, "He Walked A Mile," and last summer's "I Will Follow Christ," the powerful collaboration between Clay, Bob Carlisle and BeBe Winans.

Yet even amidst all of the public achievements and success, Clay shares now of a personal war that he battled internally for years. It's a struggle that he says took him to the lowest point in his life, and culminated in 1998 on an airplane ride that changed his life forever. The experience led him to the title of his new album, A Different Man, a project that has become a powerfully true testimonial of this segment of Clay's journey.

Clay Crosse grew up in Memphis, Tennessee in a Christian home. He came to know Christ at the age of 13, and was active in his church all through high school and college. He married his high school sweetheart, Renna, at the age of 23, and they now have two daughters. For all apparent reasons, everything was picture perfect on the outside—a perfect wife, a perfect family, a perfect career. But as he looks back in retrospect, Clay says there has been a consistent stain buried beneath the outer layers of his life. Clay recalls being in the fourth or fifth grade when he was first exposed to pornographic magazines at a friend's house. He recollects how those images were burned into his mind forever. Over the course of the next few years in junior high, high school and college, Clay remembers occasions here and there where he again came in contact with similar materials. There weren't many times, but even the small amount of exposure was enough, Clay says, to leave lasting images that ultimately became damaging.

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