Review: Faith Hill – Fireflies
Ever since her rise to Nashville fame more than 10 years ago, she’s walked a fine line between ol’ country and pop. Her breakthrough in 1998 (This Kiss from her second album Faith) was enough to win me over. A powerful velvety voice combined with super sweet lyrics. The hardcore country songs I always ignored, and her third album still had a lot of those. Still there were quite a few selected songs I liked. Then came Cry (2002), and like many before her (Shania Twain, LeAnn Rimes) a more distinct move towards more poppy ballads (actually, they all released their albums in that year, so no one can really take the credit for making that first move). Almost all of the songs on that album I liked (usually that only happens when the sun, the moon and the north star are aligned). The country radio stations, however, complained they couldn’t play any song of the album.
Now comes a new release, and it seems she’s succumbed to the Nashville pressure as the whole album is crammed (she usually has 14 songs on a CD) with that generic hardcore country stuff combined with those boring slow ones. Quite disappointingly, the lyrics aren’t that high quality either (“Is everything A okay in the USA, in the good old USA ?” “You see rock hard bodies and bikini hotties, and everybody’s got it going on” “Hey everybody, can’t you feel the rhythm now ? Hey everybody, don’t you want to party?”), no matter how seductive her voice is. Searching out the nice ones isn’t an easy job, and is a clear indication of what the grade will be.5.