Faith Hill was once on the verge of being a country music pariah.
These days, she's a superstar. From "This Kiss" to "Yellowstone: 1883,"
Faith Hill can't stop surprising us. Here's a look back at the life of this one-of-a-kind performer.
Faith Hill was born and raised in Mississippi in a small town that was ironically called Star.
According to Hill, she had an incredible childhood. While speaking to Larry King on CNN,
she described her childhood as amazing and stable, sharing nothing but praise for her parents.
Hill revealed that her father, Ted Perry, couldn't read at the time of her adoption.
Hill explained to Good Housekeeping that he'd been asked to quit school when he was only in
fourth grade to help his family. By the time he and his wife, Edna, adopted Hill,
Perry worked at a factory in Jackson while his wife contributed to the family as a bank teller.
Hill learned early in life that her parents had adopted her,
but they weren't quite as honest with her about why her birth mother had
chosen adoption. In 2007, Hill explained to Good Housekeeping,
"I had been told that [my birth mother] had an affair with a married man, and he didn't want
to leave his wife to marry her, so she gave me up for adoption. But it was completely untrue."
It seems that her parents were well-intentioned, possibly wanting to spare their daughter from
learning that her biological parents later married and had another baby whom they raised together.
Considering she's one of country music's most famous and successful artists, it probably doesn't
surprise you to learn that Faith Hill has been belting out songs since she was a young child.
While speaking to The Washington Post in 1996, Hill explained that her dominant
musical influences from childhood included powerhouse legend Aretha Franklin, saying,
"For me, the big influence wasn't Linda Ronstadt;
it was Aretha Franklin. I've always listened to Aretha."
Like Franklin, Hill first began singing at that bastion of so many southern homes: church. Hill
recalls attending services at the Star Baptist Church in her hometown. She told the newspaper.
"When I was 3 or 4 years old, I stood up on the pew and sang along.
It was just like that scene at the beginning of 'What's Love Got to Do With It' where the
congregation is real subdued and Tina Turner is shouting with a lot of soul."
Over a decade later, Hill joined Jackson, Mississippi's Steele Family's tour of
southern churches with both Black and white congregations, explaining to The Washington Post,
"I always found myself gravitating toward the churches where the singers
would fill themselves up with the Spirit and just let it out."
By the time she was 19 years old, Faith Hill was ready for change — or so she thought. In 1987, she
packed up and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where she quickly met her first husband, Daniel Hill.
Faith later told Outsider that her move to Nashville was a case of making the
right decision at the right time. She explained that the origin of her singing
career sounds like something out of, quote, "a fairy tale." She explained,
"I was singing around the office one day, and this songwriter was there and overheard me singing."
From there, the songwriter asked Faith to record a demo, and soon she began working
for songwriters around the city. She was only 20 years old at the time of their wedding, which
took place about a year and a half after they met. Despite having the best intentions, Faith
later told People she rushed things and wasn't really ready for marriage at the time. She said,
"I was young. I just jumped in the fire way too soon."
Despite her happy childhood, Faith Hill always felt like part of her was out there,
just drifting along — and she wanted to find that missing piece.
She explained to Good Housekeeping that the feeling was persistent, saying,
"I was adopted into this incredible home, a loving, positive environment,
yet I had this yearning, this kind of darkness that was also inside me."
After searching for three years, Faith finally met her birth mother in 1993.
Daniel Hill later told People that the three years Faith spent looking for her birth mother
took something out of the singer, but Faith seems to have no regrets.
While recalling that first face-to-face meeting, Faith told Good Housekeeping,
"The first time I met [my birth mother],
I just stared at her. I'd never seen anyone that looked anything like me."
She went on to explain that the experience filled something inside her she knew she had
been missing. Meeting her birth mother was such a watershed moment for Faith
that it impacted nearly everything around her — including her marriage.
In retrospect, Faith Hill understands that the search for her birth mother
was a part of a larger search for who she really was. She realized she needed
to move on from her relationship with her husband. As Hill told Good Housekeeping,
"I was going through so much. I was like a flower trying to bud.
Marriage wasn't what I needed. It was a disguise."
The couple ended their relationship, and Hill’s music career was starting to take off.
Hill explained to CNN that her breakthrough moment was right around the corner. While
singing at Nashville's Bluebird Café alongside songwriter Gary Burr, Hill was spotted by an
executive from Warner Brothers who wanted to know more about the blonde woman singing backup.
According to Hill, she was approached after the set
ended and immediately asked if she had a demo tape available. Hill told CNN,
“So that's basically where it started.”
Hill soon after released her first album in 1993
and wound up on tour across the U.S. with Reba McEntire.
Country music fans around the world know the story of powerhouse couple Faith Hill and
Tim McGraw — or, at least, they think they do. While it's hard now to imagine a world in which
these two don't end up with each other, they weren't properly introduced until 1994 or '95.
At the time, Hill was actually engaged to her then-producer. However, Hill told People that
when she met McGraw, she knew what she had to do, no matter what anyone thought. She explained,
"If someone is going to judge my character because I was engaged to somebody and then I left him for
somebody else ... I can't control that. But I wasn't about to let Tim slip through my hands."
Hill wasn't the only one engaged. McGraw had a longtime girlfriend he planned to marry
until he met Hill, so they both had work to do before they could be in the clear to
be together themselves. Hill told CNN that, after the two met at a Nashville radio show,
they felt instant chemistry. McGraw popped the question while they were on tour together,
and the pair married on October 6, 1996, near McGraw's hometown in Louisiana.
As if touring the country, falling love, and being on the brink of super-stardom wasn't enough,
Faith Hill and Tim McGraw were also earning two more titles: mom and dad.
Soon after tying the knot, the pair welcomed their daughter, Gracie,
in 1997, her sister, Maggie, in 1998, and their third daughter, Audrey, in 2001.
Audrey's birth was particularly dramatic. Hill went in for what
she thought was a routine checkup at seven months pregnant and soon
learned that Audrey needed to be delivered immediately. Hill told Good Housekeeping,
"The doctor said my [amniotic] fluid had just gone. My placenta had stopped working."
McGraw raced to the hospital as Hill underwent an emergency C-section,
and Audrey was born later that day, weighing a little under 4 pounds.
After spending weeks in the hospital, Audrey came home, and the Hill-McGraw family blossomed.
Hill once said that she was given her children to see just how patient she could be as a mom,
admitting she didn't always do her best. As she put it to Good Housekeeping,
"I try to go through this whole thing of letting a child be the person that she is,
and then it's like, '[Okay], forget about that. You're wearing what I say you're gonna wear!'"
Faith Hill was a mom of two kids under the age of 2 when she recorded and released the
record that would push her career over the top into mainstream music.
She later recalled to CNN that her first single, "Wild One," put her on the map
and was quickly followed by a second single before the album dropped. Hill explained,
"My first single did really, really well ... and then 'This Kiss' was a huge,
huge record across the board. And then my 'Breathe' album
was definitely the album that changed my career for sure."
The record was Hill's fourth, and it wasn't necessarily well received by critics despite
the overwhelmingly positive fan reception. In a review of the album, Entertainment Weekly wrote
that the record might just be too much for Hill's base of country music fans, noting,
"If Hill expects any real longevity, she'd do well to pare down the flash and histrionics.
Certainly her core audience is willing to forgive a country girl's misguided, big-city flirtation."
“That’s oh — that’s okay.”
Producing such a successful record inspired Hill to continue to push harder for her next album,
"Cry." She told CMT that, despite "Breathe" selling 8 million records,
she wasn't feeling too much pressure to repeat the feat — she just wanted
to make music that her fans around the world would love.
Despite achieving huge amounts of success all over the world,
Faith Hill has also dealt with plenty of critics and naysayers. As CMT notes,
there have been plenty of people — fans and industry professionals alike — who have seemed
almost disappointed that Hill crossed over from country music to mainstream success. To that end,
while accepting the Country Music Association's award for Female Vocalist of the Year in 2000,
Hill addressed the complaints head-on. During her acceptance speech, Hill said,
"Everyone has questioned where I'm at and what I'm doing, and I tell you something, I love this
business and I love this industry, and I love the people in this business and my heart is here."
While speaking to CMT, Hill went on to add that the week of the awards show
she experienced a new feeling about Nashville and country music: shame. After explaining that
she's never tried to be anything other than a proud country artist, Hill said,
"I have been attacked, personally, for the choices that I have made, and I was angry."
Despite those feelings, Hill admitted her speech wasn't the best place to make the statement.
Even though she felt justified in what she said, she explained,
"I've never used that moment to make a point, ever in my life. But I think I had had enough."
These days, Faith Hill is embarking on something brand new with her husband of
more than three decades: starring in a television show together. The pair spent four months filming
the "Yellowstone" prequel "1883" in Montana and Texas and seemed to love every minute of it.
This isn't the first time Hill has acted. In fact,
she appeared on-screen in "The Stepford Wives" in 2004 and "Dixieland" in 2017.
Even so, this is the first time she and her husband have worked together in this way.
“Thanks for the help.”
Since the pair are a real-life married couple playing a married couple on the show, they knew
they would have to be clear about the dynamics and what makes their characters different from
their real selves. Hill explained that they made it work by establishing rules. She told People,
"We have made it a point not to work on our scenes together until we're on set.
It's important that we react to one another naturally as characters, not as husband and wife."
The show came at a perfect time, as the pair's children are now grown and
have moved out of the family's home in Nashville. Hill told People that
working with her husband on the show has been such a great experience. She said,
"I've never had so much fun in my life. I don't want to stop."
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