“Stealing Kisses”
Faith Hill
Written by Lori McKenna
2005
“This Kiss” and “Breathe” were such massive crossover hits that they’ve come to represent Faith Hill’s catalog, despite those delightful confections not being terribly representative of her work as a whole.
Country radio played those smash hits, but they didn’t know what to do with “Stealing Kisses,” which holds the interesting distinctions of effectively ending Faith Hill’s run at country radio while also launching the mainstream country career of its songwriter, Lori McKenna.
Hill discovered McKenna while selecting material for her most recent studio album, Fireflies. Once she heard one song, she sought out McKenna’s entire catalog, ultimately releasing four songs from her on the final album. (One of those tracks, “Lone Star,” was a digital bonus track.)
McKenna’s writing found its perfect voice in Faith Hill. From the beginning, so much of Hill’s work explored the oppressive tension of a woman sacrificing her own fulfillment for the benefit and pleasure of others, and dealing with the pain and loneliness that result from putting everyone else first, like a good girl is supposed to do.
The woman of “It Matters to Me” cries out for communication from the man who goes silent when they argue. The woman of “Someone Else’s Dream” defers her own dreams to satisfy her mother, while the protagonist of “When the Lights Go Down” wrestles with how her own demons pushed away the man she loved.
“Stealing Kisses” is the ultimate expression of Hill’s solidarity with, and understanding of, the “heads I win, tails you lose” set of choices given to the women of Hill’s generation and background.
The song uses the second person in the verses, setting up the illusion that her own story is at first the story of the listener. She reminisces about being a teenager drinking with her boyfriend, and wondering about the wife of the cop who “takes his beer for his own,” not revealing it’s her own story until the chorus, where she snaps to her reality of being alone in her kitchen, wearing a housedress and waiting for her very late husband to get home from work. (“It’s probably the traffic again…another important meeting.”
McKenna understands the isolation of suburbia better than any writer today, and Hill’s sophistication as a vocalist shines brightest on this track as she delivers cutting lines that reveal in a few words what prose would need pages for: “You haven’t talked to an adult all day except for your neighbor who drives you crazy.”
Hill’s phrasing sharpens the blade of McKenna’s lyrics and she fully turns the knife in the bridge, where she places the listener back in time and issues one final, dire warning: “ so you’re standing outside your high school door. The ones you walked through 20 years before. And you whisper to all the girls, ‘Run. Run.”
On McKenna’s original recording, her delivery of the bridge is measured. On Hill’s cover, it’s the money shot, with her expressive vocal building in intensity and then seamlessly flowing back into the first person chorus. Hill sends the message to the listener she’s been speaking to directly since the beginning: “It’s too late to save me. Please save yourself.”
When McKenna won Song of the Year at the CMA Awards for “Girl Crush,” she thanked God and Faith Hill for her remarkable success as a Music Row songwriter. McKenna deserves all of the success that has come to her, but there’s a melancholy in her work that Hill is best suited to deliver. (One need only listen to Sara Evans’ butchering of “Bible Song” to understand just how masterful Hill is when covering McKenna.)
In 2025, it will be twenty years since Hill’s last studio set was released. Her voice is needed and sorely missed. Here’s hoping that if we do get another album, it will be Faith Hill Sings Lori McKenna.
Additional Listening:
Alternate Recordings
- Lori McKenna, “Stealing Kisses”
McKenna and the Darkness of Suburbia
- “Bible Song”
- “The Luxury of Knowing”
Hill Sings McKenna
- “Lone Star”
- “If You Ask”
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