- Contemporary Christian musician, singer and songwriter born in 1962 in Peducah Kentucky.
- Chapman’s father owned a music store, and Steven learned to play guitar and piano while hanging out at the store. After high school he enrolled in college as a pre-med student, but he soon dropped out and moved to Nashville, enrolling in college to major in music and hoping to catch on in a music career. During college, he worked summers performing at Opryland USA, and he wrote songs during his downtime, expecting that he could be more successful as a songwriter than as a performer. In 1983, the Christian group The Imperials released a song written by Chapman, Side by Side. This increased his exposure as a songwriter, and in 1987 he signed with a major Christian music label.
- He released his debut album First Hand in 1987. Three songs from the album charted on the Contemporary Christian chart, with Weak Days peaking at #2 and Run Away reaching #4. His next album, Real Life Conversations, was released the next year. It had four Christian music hits, with two songs topping the chart – His Eyes and My Turn Now. Suddenly, Chapman was one of the biggest names in Christian music. He won his first Dove Award when His Eyes won Song of the Year from the Gospel Music Association.
- His next two albums cemented his role as the leading CCM artist of the day. Eight songs from these albums topped the Contemporary Christian chart. His album For the Sake of the Call earned him his first Grammy award, for Best Pop Gospel Album. During the rest of the 90s, he released four more studio albums. Each topped the Christian Albums chart, and two of them were certified platinum. Sixteen songs topped the CCM chart. One of them was I Will Not Go Quietly, a song he contributed to the 1997 film The Apostle. His 1994 album Heaven In the Real World was his first to chart on the Billboard 200 album chart.
- Entering the 2000’s, his 2001 album Declaration reached #14 on the Billboard 200, and his 2003 album All About Love was his highest charting album, reaching #12. The latter included his first single that charted on a non-Christian related Billboard chart – How Do I Love Her reached #27 on the Adult Contemporary chart. From 2000 to 2019, he had 28 singles chart on the Christian Songs chart. His most recent song to top the chart was a Christmas song titled Christmas Time Again, released in 2012.
- In 2013, Chapman released a bluegrass-styled Gospel album titled Deep Roots. It reached #2 on the Christian Albums chart, #1 on the Top Bluegrass Albums chart and #68 on the Billboard 200 chart. A second bluegrass album, 2019’s Deeper Roots: Where the Bluegrass Grows, also topped the Top Bluegrass Albums chart.
- Chapman has won 59 Dove Awards, more than any other artist, including seven awards for Male Vocalist of the Year. He also has won five Grammy awards with 18 nominations. Songs performed by him have reached #1 a total of 49 times. He and his wife adopted three children from China, and they published three children’s book with themes about adoption. He also has written inspirational books for adults, and a memoir about his life.
- Chapman’s most viewed video on YouTube is Cinderella. Released in 2007, Chapman wrote it after giving his two young daughters a bath. They didn’t want to go to bed, stalling by putting on their Cinderella gowns. After refusing to read them a story, he left their bedroom, and he began to reflect on his oldest daughter, who was 20 years old at the time. He recalled that he often wasn’t at home for his daughter as he promoted his own career, and this led to the writing of Cinderella. Tragically, one of the young daughters was accidentally killed in the driveway of their home a few months later. The song took on a whole new meaning after her death. Chapman felt he could never perform the song again, but after a message from God, he realized that singing the song would bring hope to others, so he started to sing it again. Here’s the video.