CeCe Winans

About CeCe Winans

CeCe Winans grew up in Detroit as part of the Winans family, which is basically gospel royalty. Ten kids, all musical, church every week. Her parents led the choir at a Pentecostal church, so she and her siblings were singing before they could probably do much else. By the early eighties, she and her brother BeBe were performing as a duo, and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker heard them and brought them onto The PTL Club as regulars. Not exactly where you'd expect a major music career to start, but here we are.

BeBe and CeCe Winans became the thing in contemporary Christian music through the late eighties and early nineties. Their albums sold millions. "Addictive Love" from their 1991 album Different Lifestyles crossed over to R&B radio, which doesn't happen often for gospel artists. They won Grammys, toured constantly, and essentially proved that gospel music could sound contemporary without losing what made it gospel. Then in 1995, CeCe went solo with Alone in His Presence, a worship album that was quieter and more traditional than the pop-leaning stuff she'd been doing with her brother.

Her 1998 album Everlasting Love is probably the one that defined her solo career. It went platinum, won a Grammy, and "Alabaster Box" became one of those songs that every gospel choir has sung at some point. She wasn't trying to chase crossover success the way some gospel artists do. The music stayed rooted in church tradition but with production that felt current. She could sing anything, clearly, but she mostly chose to sing about exactly what she'd always sung about.

Through the 2000s, she kept releasing albums that performed well within gospel but didn't make much noise outside of it. Throne Room in 2003, Purified in 2005, Thy Kingdom Come in 2008. She won more Grammys than most people win any awards. She wrote a couple of books. She opened a beauty salon in Nashville, which feels very practical for someone who's been famous for decades but never seemed particularly interested in celebrity.

In 2017, she released Let Them Fall in Love, her first album in years, and it felt like she was revisiting the crossover approach that worked before. It had features, modern production, songs that could work on different formats. She's continued performing, often with her brother again, doing the legacy thing without calling it that.

She's in her fifties now, still recording and touring when she wants to. Twelve Grammys, countless other awards, millions of albums sold. She's remained consistent in a way that's rare, never chasing trends too hard, never abandoning what she came from. Gospel music has changed around her, gotten louder and more theatrical, but she's mostly stayed in her lane.

Her shows are worship services that happen to be concerts. Winans commands a stage with understated authority, letting long vocal runs and conversational moments between songs do the heavy lifting. Crowds are reverent but engaged, singing along on choruses, with genuine emotional responses rather than superficial enthusiasm.

Known for Alabaster Box, Never Lost a Battle, Great Is Your Mercy, For Always, That's What Faith Can Do

See CeCe Winans Live