Back in 1985, Leslie Phillips<\/a>\u2018 career in contemporary Christian music<\/a> was ascending like a meteor. Her record label, Myrrh, touted her as the \u201cChristian Cyndi Lauper,\u201d but it was a persona the then-23-year-old singer found profoundly false.<\/p>\n And it was a label that Phillips would not wear.<\/p>\n Refusing to be penned in by the expectations and limits of the Christian music industry<\/a>, Phillips walked away from her Myrrh contract and reemerged soon after on Virgin Records<\/a> as Sam Phillips<\/a>, singing about her need for \u201cGod\u201d and \u201cnot the political church.\u201d<\/p>\n Under her given name, Leslie Phillips sang about being \u201cblack and white in a grey world,\u201d where she didn\u2019t fit. \u201cI don\u2019t mind being different,\u201d she sang, \u201cbecause I\u2019m different for the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, it seemed like a clear statement of faith in the face of a world filled with moral and spiritual relativism. But looking back, perhaps the lady hath protested too much.<\/p>\n For her entire career as Sam Phillips, she appears most comfortable dwelling in the gray areas of life \u2014 the in-betweens, margins and conundrums of life and faith.<\/p>\n As Sam, for nearly 25 years Phillips\u2019 pursuit of the truth has set her on a different trajectory, crafting an enigmatic career that does not fit into tidy, labeled boxes. She\u2019s the kind of person who seems to honestly ask, \u201cWhat\u2019s a box?\u201d<\/p>\n For her rabid fans \u2014 and they are legion \u2014 the paradoxical tension Phillips embraces in her songs is the heart of her appeal. She is honest about what she feels and what she doesn\u2019t know. It\u2019s an uncommon quality, and one that makes her music both enigmatic and enduring.<\/p>\n Her longing for God remains, as does her chafing at the politics of \u201cchurch.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult for me to talk about spirituality with a spiritual language that a lot of people use because it\u2019s not big enough. The vocabulary needs to be bigger,\u201d Phillips said recently by phone from her Los Angeles home. \u201cI do get frustrated when the church becomes a mouthpiece for the political right wing in this country. It\u2019s sad to me\u2026It just seems like love has been left so far behind. Now it\u2019s screaming with your fingers in your ears and that\u2019s what Christianity has come to mean to so many people.<\/p>\n \u201cAre people loving? That\u2019s the first thing,\u201d she continued. \u201cAnd if they\u2019re not, then I\u2019m back to square one. It doesn\u2019t resonate. To me that\u2019s where spirituality begins.\u201d<\/p>\n On the road, Phillips often encounters fans who first knew and loved her as Leslie and who felt, as she did, alienated from the church for one reason or another. \u201cThey\u2019re still listening to me now, years and years later because of that,\u201d she said. \u201cI think that they felt that I was on the journey with them, which I have been. Nobody is static\u2026People change and they grow and they learn.\u201d<\/p>\n Phillips continues to forge her own path, most recently eschewing a traditional record contract and instead releasing her music directly to her fans via a $52 digital subscription on her website, www.samphillips.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Through the online project, titled \u201cThe Long Play<\/span><\/a>,\u201d Phillips began releasing new songs \u2014 nearly 50 in all on six EP digital-only albums \u2014 in October 2009 and culminating with the last download, the 10-song \u201cCameras in the Sky\u201d in February 2011.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Long Play\u201d defies any single musical genre. Many songs feature the instrumental backing of the Section Quartet, a classical string ensemble that has produced strings-only covers of rock songs by artists as diverse as Radiohead, Coldplay and Nine Inch Nails.<\/p>\n The subjects Phillips sings about on \u201cThe Long Play\u201d are even more eclectic than the music itself. Love, loss and broken relationships\u00a0 \u2014 Phillips and husband \/music producer T-Bone Burnett, with whom she has a 13-year-old daughter, split a few years back, but she speaks of him fondly and with great respect \u2014 a child\u2019s tragic death, classic Christmas tunes and several songs inspired by the life of the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson<\/a>.<\/p>\n A study in contradictions, McPherson, too, was a \u201cmaverick\u201d in many ways, said Phillips, a native of the Los Angeles area where McPherson founded her Angelus Temple<\/a> in the 1920s, which grew into the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel<\/a>.<\/p>\n McPherson was an entrepreneur, a performer and a preacher of a very traditional gospel. She railed against the evils of popular culture and yet employed the costumes, staging and media of early Hollywood to draw thousands to her congregation. She lived lavishly, yet fed droves of the poor during the Great Depression<\/a>. A woman of God, she fell from grace when she fell in love with a man who wasn\u2019t her husband.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that she was flawed,\u201d Phillips explained, \u201cwas fascinating.\u201d<\/p>\n Phillips sees great beauty in imperfection.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t let perfect make you blind to this beautiful world,\u201d Phillips sings in \u201cMagic for Everybody.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t erase your crooked lines. Take your mistakes and come with me.\u201d<\/p>\n Later this year, Phillips will release a new studio album, titled \u201cPretty Time Bomb,\u201d a \u201chappier\u201d album than the \u201cLong Play\u201d project and one that she intends to distribute more conventionally through a record label. Then, she says, she\u2019ll head back on the road on tour with the new music, surely crossing paths with many more fans whose journeys intersect with her own.<\/p>\n On the final track of \u201cThe Long Play,\u201d Phillips turns her attention back to her familiar gray territory.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople do all the wrong things for the right reasons, and somehow you understand this,\u201d she sings. \u201cI\u2019m so glad you\u2019re here. So glad.\u201d<\/p>\n For Phillips\u2019 devoted fans, the feeling is absolutely mutual.<\/p>\n [wpvideo VKhKyWIN]<\/p>\n