Tim McGraw (he said) and Faith Hill (she said)

Everywhere

McGraw is an artist that can spin a tale with only his soulful voice against a canvas of music. He starts his fourth record by painting a vivid picture of a simple, loving country life with "Where the Green Grass Grows," which gives the listener the same desire to live in that perfect place where less is so much more. The impassioned duet "It's Your Love" with wife Faith Hill will be one of country music's most requested love songs. Even in this day of the rehashed country sound, McGraw's haunting vocals boost the music: He has the ability to bring a tear to the eye and then sweep in with lighthearted rockers such as "Hard on The Ticker. --Paula Ghergia

Faith

That Faith Hill would increase the pop elements of her music doesn't come as a surprise. After all, she's a youthful, vivacious woman plenty capable of gaining the mass appeal mined by fellow female country artists Shania Twain, LeAnn Rimes, and Deana Carter. What is surprising about Hill's fourth album is how she brings new depth to her songs as well as a fresher, more pop-based sound. Instead of trying to out-sing Rimes or out-dance Twain, she works with producers Dann Huff and Byron Gallimore to create a distinctive country-pop style that is as mature as it is entertaining. As her massive crossover hit "This Kiss" proves, Hill and her collaborators know how to make the most of her limited voice and exuberant personality. The album has plenty of songs that use her talents, including the initial smash hit. --Michael McCall

Place in the Sun

The party-hearty raucousness of "I Like It, I Love It" seems like a lifetime ago for Tim McGraw, whose fifth album strikes a more reflective chord. Whether ruminating on how it felt to be "Seventeen," making resolutions for "My Next Thirty Years," or probing the depths of Rodney Crowell's "Please Remember Me," his music shows the effects of marriage and maturity. Even the drinking songs, "Senorita Margarita" and "She'll Have You Back," share an older-but-wiser sentiment. While there are no duets with wife Faith Hill, her presence is evident on "My Best Friend" and "Some Things Never Change." McGraw wrote none of the songs here, but his emotional investment in the material results in an engaging collection. --Don McLeese

Breathe

From the suggestive series of photos in the CD's packaging to the aerobicized dance-floor workouts within, Faith Hill refuses to concede an inch of crossover dominance to Shania Twain. Except for a seductive duet with husband Tim McGraw on "Let's Make Love" and an occasional pinch of fiddle or steel guitar, there's little here to characterize Hill as a country artist. As pop, the results range from pretty ("Breathe," "Love Is a Sweet Thing") to pretty slight ("I Got My Baby," "If My Heart Had Wings") to borderline inane ("Bringing Out the Elvis," the voyeuristic twist of "The Way You Love Me"). Though Hill's version of Bruce Springsteen's "If I Should Fall Behind" is admirably understated, too much of the album substitutes surface dazzle for emotional depth. --Don McLeese

Set This Circus Down

As a singer who has parlayed boyish charm and modest talent into a multiplatinum career, Tim McGraw seems like the guy next door who got incredibly lucky--and not just with his marriage to Faith Hill. This easy-listening collection features a generous 14 cuts, heavy on power ballads ("You Get Used to Somebody," "Take Me Away from Here," "Why We Said Goodbye") with soaring choruses and frothy sentiments, but light on soulful substance. For variety, McGraw proves a dead-on Springsteen mimic with "Forget About You," dubiously links himself to Hank Williams and Elvis with "Things Change," and crosses over toward Ricky Martin territory on the Spanish-tinged "Let Me Love You." Hill joins hubby on background vocals for the comparatively subtle "Angry All the Time." --Don McLeese

Cry

Faith Hill finally owns up to what we knew all along. She may be from deep-dish Mississippi, but she isn't a country singer, and never has been. This babe's a diva now. And, as she says in her best Diana Ross voice on "Free," "There ain't nothin' I can do about it." But what she could exercise some control over, as the coproducer of her fifth studio album, is the quality and style of her particular brand of über-pop, which on Cry considerably ratchets up the noise factor from 1999's Breathe. The songs, many written by tunesmiths long working in Nashville, often come stocked with meaningful messages, i.e. the emptiness of addiction ("If You're Gonna Fly") or the momentary connection with a loved one who has passed on ("You're Still Here"). Yet Hill and company (longtime producers Byron Gallimore and Dann Huff, in conjunction with Marti Frederiksen) obviously think the best way to make an R&B/pop record is to build a huge, airless production around screeching guitars, wall-rattling drums, and Big Mama choirs. The singer herself may be, indeed, turning out her best vocals ever. But the album itself is a self-conscious mess--a big, wallowing cacophony of sound that leaves the listener numb. In the end, it's a miserable failure. This chanteuse's R&B just ain't got no soul. --Alanna Nash

Live Like You Were Dying

McGraw sits backwards in the saddle, looking not at where he's going, but where he's been. The image tips off the theme of this solid, 16-song album--for a singer who doesn't write, it's as close to autobiography as it gets. "How Bad Do You Want It," for example references not only bluesman Robert Johnson's crossroads chat with ol' Lucifer, but also the kind of relentless drive that got McGraw to the top of the Nashville heap. The dryly funny "Back When" finds the man who recently bought a $6.4 million Beverly Hills mansion yearning for a simpler time. "Walk Like a Man" talks about the kind of abusive father McGraw himself had before he discovered he was the son of baseball legend Tug McGraw. The late pitcher is surely the subject of three songs here about death, loss, and carrying on, especially the title track, a big, uplifting affirmation of life. If it's also a little sappy, so be it--singing about the most painful thing he's ever endured, he gives it a dignified, understated reading (and only a week or so after his father's passing). It takes an artist to do that, and while McGraw may not be the greatest of warblers, nobody in country can touch him at conveying emotions too deep to express in words. Look for this to be the album of his career. --Alanna Nash

Fireflies

It's hard to imagine a more schizophrenic album than Fireflies, but Faith Hill, the comely pride of Star, Mississippi, had a lot of different factions to please. There's the country set, furious about the L.A. excess of 2002's Cry, as ravaged a pop album as ever made. Then there's the club set, which actually mistook Cry for music, and wanted more. Finally, there's Hill herself, still bruised from the critical drubbing the last album got, and obviously feeling the need to prove herself anew, going brunette to show her transformation. The bad news about Fireflies is that the all-out country songs--the autobiographical "Mississippi Girl," which practically begs forgiveness for Cry, and the cartoonish "Dearly Beloved," a hoedown ditty about a shotgun wedding--are embarrassing attempts to show that the Dixified diva hasn't gotten above her raising. Then, two other offerings--Darrell Scott's preachy protest number "We've Got Nothing But Love to Prove" and the beautiful torch ballad "Paris"--are both lyrical head-scratchers, and find the artist floundering as to who she is and what she's about. Where Hill knowingly flexes her muscle is in tackling three complex, literate songs by alt-folkie Lori McKenna--the title track (about the power of dreams), "Stealing Kisses" (about reevaluating life choices), and "If You Ask" (about living with a substance abuser). Hill gives these performances nuanced readings that say buckets more about her own life than "Mississippi Girl" could ever convey, and point to an emotional reservoir Hill is just beginning to tap. Here's hoping she goes back to that well again and again. --Alanna Nash

Let It Go

More of a happy-go-lucky artist in his younger days, Tim McGraw here sounds as if he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. After the comparatively lighthearted, irresistibly catchy opening single, "Last Dollar (Fly Away)," most of the midtempo material that follows ranges from the somber to the morose. There's the night-shift weariness of "I'm Workin'," the alcohol-drenched heartbreak of "Whiskey and You," and the soul-tortured title track. Even a song with the upbeat title "Put Your Lovin' on Me" has McGraw asking his lover to "be my drug" and "take this weight off me." Things turn positively lethal with "Between the River and Me," the story of revenge on an alcoholic, wife-beating stepfather. The set also features the obligatory duet of marital devotion with Faith Hill ("I Need You") and a couple of nods toward classic country ("Kristofferson" and the closing "Shotgun Rider," which could be McGraw's "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys"). "Nothin' to Die For" returns to the inspirational vein of "Live Like You Were Dying," but little here finds McGraw in a feel-good mode. --Don McLeese

Hits

Faith Hill finally has her first greatest-hits album after 6 successful albums. The Hits spans the superstar's career by bringing together seven number one hits like "This Kiss," "Breathe," and "Mississippi Girl" plus more fan favorites.