Faith Hill Flirts With 'Fireflies'

When country superstar Faith Hill settled on a name for her latest release, she couldn’t have picked a more fitting moniker. Fireflies, she calls it, and that’s precisely what the album brings us.

Think about it: an evening field with those little winged insects scattered about, gently buzzing—whirling in the summer breeze, leaving behind brief glimmers of pulsing light.

They light up our eyes. They make us smile. Then, they fade again into the dusk.

A Satisfying Sparkle
For Hill, the album’s name spawned from “Fireflies,” written by folk artist Lori McKenna. “I wanted to call the album Fireflies because even before I heard the song, the title took me to my childhood—to a place filled with incredible memories. Then I heard the song, and it said so much about the need to dream, about how sometimes it’s all we have.”

Indeed, this title track is a comforting, whimsical song with fanciful imagery. (“I believe in fairytales and dreamers’ dreams/Like bed sheet sails/And I believe in Peter Pan and miracles/Anything I can do to get by/And fireflies.”) And Hill’s tender yet powerful vocals give the song a special spark. It's the same spark, come to think of it, that earned Ms. Hill four consecutive People’s Choice awards starting in 2001. The question is, will Fireflies continue the streak?

Let’s explore.

A handful of uplifting tracks give us some hope. “The Lucky One” and “You Stay With Me” show couples deeply in love, toughing out life’s battles as a team. Likewise, “We’ve Got Nothing But Love to Prove” envisions a world void of tragedy and pain, asking, “What if no one had to go to war?”

“Mississippi Girl,” the record’s first single, takes us on Hill’s journey from back home to the big stage. Fame, she says, hasn’t cracked her country exterior because “a Mississippi girl don’t change her ways just because everybody knows her name.” And even inside, she’s still that same old Faith from a little town called Star. (“I ain’t big-headed from a little bit of fame/I still like wearin’ my old ballcap/Ridin’ my kids around piggyback/ They might know me around the world/But y’all, I’m still a Mississippi girl.”) It’s an upbeat tune, and in truth its message is something we’d all like to hear from our favorite artist. But elsewhere on Fireflies, there are not-so-heartwarming lyrics I wish Hill had skipped.

A Fading Glimmer
“Dearly Beloved” heads up that list. The sassy tune takes an unflattering look at a couple’s nuptials and makes a saddening prediction: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to watch two people we know make a big mistake/They’ll stand up at the altar and swear ‘I do’/They’ll be together forever ‘til they find somebody new.”

Why pursue wedded bliss but check your heart at the door?

The bride’s father answers that question quite well when he says, “They had a couple of dates/Now she’s three months late ... I’d like to welcome y’all/To see the side effects of sex and alcohol.” The song could have been a cautionary warning, but its upbeat tempo and knee-slappin’ approach instead make it seem like a celebration of a crumbling marriage.

“Sunshine and Summertime” is another catchy track that fosters a less-than-ideal look at life. We hear about the joys of “new friends and blue skies that never end,” but along with that come “ice cold Coronas,” “rock hard bodies” and “bikini hotties.” At Hill's party, it would seem, having fun comes secondary to the fact that “everyone’s showin’ what they’ve got.”

Elsewhere, Fireflies offers stories about divorce and lust. “I Ain’t Gonna Take It Anymore” is the anthem of a woman gearing up to walk out on her spouse, and “I Want You” describes a sexual longing Hill doesn’t even attempt to disguise.

It's songs like these that extinguish that promising sparkle I’d hoped Hill would deliver, though she says the album isn’t meant to be so dimly lit; she just wanted it to be real. “I feel a closeness to all of the albums that I’ve recorded," she said, "but this one, to me, just feels as honest and as real as it gets. It speaks about a lot of things that are personal to all of us.”

Is lust real? Are tragedies real? Sure. But when we get a small taste of Faith Hill’s ability to inspire and encourage, it’s hard not to wish she’d held true to her desire to “dream” rather than settling in to tales that lack hope and celebrate the absence of virtue.