Tim McGraw, Faith Hill still side by side
Country’s superstar couple have their first-ever duets album out today
CMAs and you feel yourself change.”
“It’s like you lose control of your body,” McGraw added.
The CMA moment was years in the making. Out Friday, The Rest of Our Life is an 11-song duets album the two have dreamed of since their daughters were young. The album’s accompanying Soul2Soul world tour sold out 80 shows in
2017 and more are booked in
2018. The tour marks the first time in a decade McGraw and Hill have toured together. Hill deliberately stopped touring to raise their three daughters. But now that the girls are older — they are 20, 19 and 15 — the timing felt right for the couple to move forward with their careers, side by side.
“We both turned 50 in the year of the tour, so we thought that was a great time to do it because (laughs) when will we get to do it again after turning 50?” McGraw said with a laugh, Hill seated beside him in a Music Row studio, looking at him in mild disbelief. “We may never get the opportunity to do it again. We may not be able to do it again.”
“OK, stop,” she jumped in. “Are you serious? Look at you,” she said, referring to his toned frame.
The business piece of the puzzle fell into place when McGraw and Hill signed with Sony Music Nashville. Their new record deals mark the first time in their careers they are on the same label, which McGraw said significantly simplified the process of making the album.
“What I have found of both of them is that as iconic as they are and as accomplished as they are, they’re just great people,” said Sony Music Nashville chairman and CEO Randy Goodman. “This has been a labor of love project, and it’s great stuff.”
The couple worked together to decide on the 11 songs — McGraw said there were supposed to be only 10 tracks but that the couple added an extra to “shake it all out.” They didn’t want a classic duets album, but hoped to create a timeless collection of songs that still sounded “cool and fresh and interesting.”
“We didn’t want to get gimmicky with it,” McGraw said. “We wanted to find great songs and … songs that were told from different perspectives.”
“That’s kind of like a marriage is,” Hill added. “Life together is sometimes when your friend, your best friend, your husband or your wife is needing a little extra help and you help carry the weight. You just have to walk beside one another.”
“And you fail at it sometimes,” McGraw said.
“That’s right,” she agreed. “You require more help. I require more help, and that’s just part of the walk through life together.”
McGraw’s favorite tracks on the album include the romantic, cinematic Cowboy Lullaby, the Lori McKenna and Barry Dean co-written Damn Good at Holding On and The Bed We Made, written by McKenna, Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey.
When Hill heard her hus- band tick off the sexy song title, she snapped her head around and beamed at him. McGraw kept talking, calling it “a unique way to talk about being passionate about each other.”
“She was scared of what I was going to say,” McGraw quipped.
“He just makes me smile,” Hill said, looking at her husband. “I don’t have a hole in my sweater, do I?”
“No, you don’t,” he replied. Charlie Cook, vice president of country formats for Cumulus Media, said the couple’s open adoration for each other continues to endear them to their peers and country music fans.
“I think that the fans see that they love each other, both in casual situations and when they are on stage performing,” Cook said. “Rest of Our Life tells their story and one that everyone aspires to in our personal lives.”
The couple are side by side in most things in life — literally and figuratively. McGraw said that even when they aren’t touring together they still manage to spend about 90% of their time with each other. And when it came to raising their daughters, Hill said they agreed she would “step away” from touring to be home with them. McGraw was — and still is — consistently charting hit songs, and Hill said it was the best financial decision for their family for him to be the one to keep touring. In addition, the couple tried to stagger their big projects so someone was always at home. Their goal, Hill said, was to give their girls “the most normal childhood possible.”
“When we were there with them at school events or wherever, we were their parents and truly known as Mr. and Mrs. McGraw,” she said. “It’s very important to us that they have their own identity. When we went back on the road to do this tour, it was kind of exciting because our girls, they were young when we did the last one, and they’ve never seen me in that way.”
It was that devotion as parents — and the increasing regularity of mass shootings — that recently led Hill and McGraw to publicly call for gun control. Country music fans typically are a conservative audience that places a premium on the Second Amendment. Artists in the genre often are hesitant to share opinions that might conflict with their fan base, but the singers view it as their duty to start the conversation.
“What struck me so hard after the Vegas shooting ... it’s when the doctors and nurses came out and said they had never seen wounds of this magnitude because these are the kinds of wounds that you see on a battlefield in war,” Hill said. “That is wrong, period. Our military, our men and women have been fighting for this country and the democracy of this country for so long … and it’s not so we can have citizens walk this free country in this democracy and be afraid they’re going to be shot up by someone as if they were on the battlefield.”
“When we went back on the road ... it was kind of exciting because our girls (have) never seen me in that way.” Faith Hill