Faith Hill
A Country Music singer known as much for her own music as she is for her longterm marriage to Tim McGraw. Faith Hill debuted in 1993 with the song "Wild One" from her album Take Me as I Am and remained a regular presence on the country music charts throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s. Her biggest hits came in the latter half of the 1990s decade, including the McGraw duet "It's Your Love", as well as "This Kiss", "Breathe" and "The Way You Love Me", all of which crossed over to pop radio.
After a more pop and AC oriented crossover album, Faith returned to form in 2005 with Fireflies, which returned her to her more traditional country-pop sound. This album accounted for her last Number One hit in "Mississippi Girl" (co-written by John Rich of Big & Rich). She's been pretty much quiet after a couple flops from a Greatest Hits Album and a stray Christmas album, but finally returned in 2011 with the dud single "Come Home" (a One Republic cover).
- Assumed Win: The 2006 Country Music Awards saw Faith Hill and Carrie Underwood both nominated for Female Vocalist of the Year. As the nominations were being announced, a camera was trained on all five finalists, including Hill and Underwood. Then, as Underwood was announced the winner, Hill smiled and raised her arms, then apparently screamed "What?" and stormed away. All of this was caught on live television just before the nominee camera shots were pulled away. Faith Hill and her management insisted the act was a joke, but left many unconvinced.
- Doo Wop Progression: The first half of the verses to "I Can't Do That Anymore".
- Greatest Hits Album: The Hits.
- Lyrical Shoehorn: The first stanza of "The Way You Love Me":
If I could grant you one wish
I wish you could see the way you kiss
- So she'll grant him a wish, but she gets to pick it for him. Yeah, that makes sense. Also, the next two lines are heavily laden with "ooh"s just to make the meter fit.
- New Sound Album:
- Breathe was noticeably more pop than her previous efforts, but it was still rooted in country enough to get her hits there.
- Cry completed the transition from country-pop to outright pop. Although this sound won her a Grammy for the title track and gave her a third number one on the AC charts, the rest of the album did very little at country or pop radio ("Cry" zoomed to #12 then dropped like a rock), and led to many fans accusing her of selling out to the pop base. She pretty much returned to her mid-1990s sound with Fireflies in 2005.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change: The verses of "The Way You Love Me" are in C. It goes up to D for most of the chorus, and then up again to E for the last line of the chorus.
- Word Salad Lyrics: "Red Umbrella". On one blog, the writers tried to justify it as being like a Beatles song, but judge for yourself:
You can wear your sorrow like an old raincoat
You can save your tears in a bottle made of gold
But the glitter on the sidewalk always shines
Yeah, even God needs to cry sometimes