Andrae Crouch

For more than 50 years, his personal albums and collaborations with artists such as Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson were at the forefront of what some modern artists call “Jesus music,” or contemporary Christian music. His lyrical success, however, did not easily for Crouch. Crouch had dyslexia, and approached songwriting with very little attention to “writing.” Instead, he would begin the songwriting process by drawing a picture of what he wanted the song to sound like. Because of his dyslexia, Crouch had learned to memorize the shape of words rather than their spelling so he often consulted others on how to fit difficult words into a song’s drawing. Despite this, Crouch called his dyslexia a blessing, and used his visual skills to write dozens of hit songs.