Faith Hill - Biography
By J Poet
Faith Hill is the most successful female country singer of all time, and a pop culture phenomenon to boot. Since 1993 she’s released six studio albums and a Greatest Hits collection. With the exception of The Hits (2007 Warners) all the albums have gone at least double platinum, selling more than 30 million albums worldwide. She has five Grammys and her co-headlining Soul2Soul tour with husband Tim McGraw in 2006 is the highest-grossing country tour in the history of country music. Hill is also a social activist, speaking out in favor of women’s rights, a rarity in country music circles, and against domestic violence. With McGraw, she founded the Neighbor’s Keeper Foundation, to help communities fund humanitarian services and on her own she created The Faith Hill Family Literacy Project to combat illiteracy worldwide. In 2001 she was on the Ladies Home Journal list of the Most Powerful Women in America.
Audrey Faith Perry was born in 1967 and given up for adoption by her birth mother. The Perry family of Star, Mississippi, who already had two sons, adopted her and she was raised with a strong musical and religious foundation. She was singing in the church choir at three, and grew up listening to country music, particularly female singers like Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris, and Reba McEntire. In high school she fronted a country band that was good enough to headline regional rodeos and county fairs. As soon as she graduated from high school she moved to Nashville.
Perry’s first job was as a receptionist at a publishing company owned by singer/songwriter Gary Morris where she went about learning the business side of the music business. She was briefly married to songwriter Dan Hill (not the Canadian songwriter of the same name) in 1988 and kept his name after the divorce. One afternoon Morris heard her singing at her desk and suggested she become a demo singer for the company. The demo gig led to back up work with singer/songwriter/producer Gary Burr, who helped Perry produce her own demo. While singing backup for Bur, she was scouted by a Warner Brothers A&R exec and signed.
Her debut album, Take Me as I Am (1992 Warner), showcased her versatility and shot up the charts behind the #1 single “Wild One”, the first #1 debut by a female singer since Connie Smith’s “Once a Day” in 1964. Her countrified cover of “Piece of My Heart”, long associated with Janis Joplin caused controversy, but was soon lodged at #1 and Take Me went triple platinum. A hectic touring schedule put a strain on Hill’s vocal chords, but after surgery she bounced back with It Matters to Me (1995 Warner), which was also double platinum. The album included pop, gospel and hard-core country, including “A Man's Home Is His Castle” a tune about domestic violence. In 1996 she launched the Faith Hill Literacy Project, inspired in part by her dad who was illiterate, and started touring with Tim McGraw; after they married they joking named their sojourn the “Till Death Us Do Part Tour.”
Hill waxed a #1 duet with McGraw, “It's Your Love”, and followed it with Faith (1998 Warner), a crossover effort that spawn several hit singles including “The Kiss”, #1 country and #7 pop. The album went 6X platinum. Breath (1999 Warners) entered the pop and country charts at #1 and took home three Grammys Best Country Album, Best Country Collaboration With Vocals for “Let’s Make Love” with McGraw and Best Country Female Vocal Performance the “Breathe” single which was a #2 pop hit. It went 10X platinum.
In 2000 Hill became a superstar with a VH1 Behind the Music profile, a CBS TV special, an endorsement deal with CoverGirl makeup, performances at the Grammys, Academy Awards and The Super Bowl. She also cut “Where Are You Christmas” for the soundtrack album How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000 Interscope).
Cry (2002 Warner) was another pop blockbuster, again entering the pop and country charts at #1 and taking home another Best Female Country Vocal Performance Grammy for the song “Breath.” “Baby You Belong” was featured in the 2002 Disney film Lilo & Stitch. In 2005 Hill appeared in the remake of The Stepford Wives, but the film was a box office bomb.
Fireflies (2005 Warner) topped the Pop, Country and AAA charts on its release, and marked a return to a more low-key country sound. It included the Grammy winning duet with McGraw “Like We Never Loved At All”. In 2006 Hill and McGraw launched the co-headlining Soul2Soul tour, the highest-grossing country tour in the history of country music. The Hits (2007 Warners) included a DVD of 11 Hill videos and went gold. Hill’s first Christmas album, Joy to the World came out in time for the 2008 holiday season. Illusion is the title of her forthcoming release, to be out sometime in 2013.
