The birth of the WOW record project can be traced to Grant Cunningham, A&R Director at Sparrow Records. In November 1994, Cunningham made a business trip to EMI Limited in London, which at the time was the parent company of Sparrow Records. There, he noticed that several British record labels were issuing an annual CD of top-rated songs, known as the "NOW" series, containing collections of pop songs. Cunningham brought the idea back to Sparrow. Sparrow executives suggested a similar project be developed for Christian pop music and he was assigned the task of getting the project off the ground.