Faith Hill American Singer Born 1967 in Ridgeland

Early life

Faith Hill was born Audrey Faith Perry on 21 September 1967 in Ridgeland, Mississippi. She was adopted as an infant and raised in the nearby town of Star by her adoptive parents, Edna and Ted Perry, in a devout Christian household. She started singing at Star Baptist Church at the age of three and gave her first public performance, at a 4-H luncheon, when she was seven. As a teenager she sang with a gospel quartet and, at 17, formed a band that played at local rodeos.

She graduated from McLaurin Attendance Center in 1986 and briefly attended Hinds Community College. At 19 she left to move to Nashville. There she worked a variety of jobs, including selling T-shirts, working as a secretary at a music publishing firm and working at a fast-food restaurant. She was eventually asked to record demos for the publisher and sang backup for the songwriter Gary Burr. A Warner Bros. Records executive heard her at one of his Nashville shows, which led to a recording contract.

Career

Her debut album, Take Me as I Am, came out in 1993. Its single "Wild One" spent four consecutive weeks at number one on Billboard's country chart in 1994, which made her the first woman in 30 years to do so, and her cover of "Piece of My Heart" also topped the country chart that year. Her second album, It Matters to Me (1995), followed after a delay and produced her third country number one with its title track.

After a break from recording, she returned with Faith in 1998, which moved toward a pop-oriented sound while keeping a country base. "This Kiss" reached number one on the country chart and the top ten on the pop chart. Breathe followed in November 1999 and debuted at the top of Billboard's country and all-genre album charts. Its title track reached number two on the Hot 100, and "The Way You Love Me" and a duet with Tim McGraw, "Let's Make Love", were also hits. In 2000 she performed the national anthem at Super Bowl XXXIV, and she recorded "Where Are You Christmas?" for the film How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

In 2001 she recorded "There You'll Be" for the soundtrack of Pearl Harbor, which became an international success. Cry (2002) debuted at number one on both the pop and country album charts, and its title track and "When the Lights Go Down" were released as singles. Fireflies (2005) marked a return to a country sound, with "Mississippi Girl" as its first single. In 2006 and 2007 she and McGraw toured together on the Soul2Soul II Tour, which became the highest-grossing country tour up to that point. The Hits, her first domestic greatest-hits collection, appeared in October 2007 with two new songs, "Lost" and "Red Umbrella". Her Christmas album Joy to the World followed in 2008, with the original song "A Baby Changes Everything", which reached number one on the adult contemporary chart.

From 2007 until 2013 she sang the opening theme for NBC's Sunday Night Football. She recorded an album originally planned for 2011, with "Come Home" and "American Heart" as singles, but it was not released. In 2012 and 2013 she and McGraw performed a Soul2Soul residency at the Venetian in Las Vegas. She released the compilation Deep Tracks in November 2016, her last record on Warner Bros., and in 2017 signed with Sony Music Nashville. With McGraw she released the joint album The Rest of Our Life in November 2017 and toured Europe and the United States on the Soul2Soul: The World Tour.

Her screen credits include the remake of The Stepford Wives (2004), her film debut, and the series 1883 (2021), a prequel to Yellowstone. She also appeared in the independent film Dixieland (2015) and was an executive producer of the lifestyle programme Pickler & Ben.

Recognition

Hill has won five Grammy Awards, 15 Academy of Country Music Awards and six American Music Awards, including the American Music Award for Favorite Country Female Artist. Her Breathe album earned three Grammys, among them Best Country Album. She won the Country Music Association's Female Vocalist of the Year award, and in 2000 she received the Samuel S. Beard Award for public service by an individual aged 35 or under. In 2009 Billboard named her its Adult Contemporary Artist of the Decade for the 2000s.

Personal life

Hill married the music publishing executive Daniel Hill in 1988; they divorced in 1994. She has been married to the singer Tim McGraw since 6 October 1996, and the couple have three daughters. After the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005 they founded the Neighbor's Keeper Foundation to fund community charities, and in 2010 they organised the Nashville Rising benefit concert after flooding in Tennessee.