“The Way You Love Me”
Faith Hill
Written by Michael Delaney and Keith Follese
Radio & Records
#1 (4 weeks)
May 12 – June 2, 2000
Billboard
#1 (4 weeks)
May 20 – June 10, 2000
I was a huge Faith Hill fan right out of the gate, and I remain one today. I love the way her part Reba, part Dolly voice slowly developed a smoky Gentry undercurrent with time, which only served to elevate her material, which was often evocative and unconventional.
But Hill became a multiplatinum superstar because of her ability to also ride whatever sound was on the rise in mainstream country music. That meant taking the lead from the Tillises and Lovelesses of the day on her first two albums, then pivoting to the pop-flavored country that Shania and LeAnn were breaking out with on her next two albums.
That approach had mixed results for me, making Faith and Breathe her two least satisfying albums in my view, despite being her commercial peak. “This Kiss” and “Breathe” are both pop perfection, but “The Way You Love Me” encapsulates everything I didn’t like about her sound at the time. She’s too smart for material like this.
It’s especially frustrating because the hook is perfect here. All I need to do is hear one note of this song, and I’ll play it out in my head, bouncing between lead and background vocals as I sing along. But I’m in misery the whole time because the lyrics are so bafflingly inane. The song opens with, “If I could grant you one wish. I wish you could see the way you kiss.” It actually goes downhill from there, making the catchy hook feel grating instead of ingratiating. Even writing about the song now, it’s playing back in my head and it’s irritating the heck out of me.
Hill followed this with a trio of AC singles that represent her career nadir (“Let’s Make Love,” “Where are You Christmas?,” “There You’ll Be”), only briefly interrupted by the glorious uptempo hit “If My Heart Had Wings.” Hill then had a quartet of damn near perfect singles from her criminally underrated Cry, before returning to the top mid-decade with an autobiographical hit that we’ll cover when we get to 2005.
“The Way You Love Me” gets a C.
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I’m not going to get too detailed about it, but man, did I hate this song. It was a big hit for her but it was very much beneath her and her talent as well IMO.
I just want to ask am I the only one that thinks the chorus to “This Kiss” and “The Way You Love Me” are a little similar. My friend who is a big Faith Hill fan makes fun of me all the time because I switch up the chorus between the two.
Yes, while “This Kiss” is certainly the better song, I do get the choruses of the two songs mixed up too.
I genuinely enjoy Faith Hill, but wow, do I hate this song. The autotune (or whatever vocal distortion is used) is wretched and the lyrics are really poor. An instant skip for me every time.
This is a fair grade. Pleasant for one listen but that’s about it.
You nearly took the words right out of my mouth with this review. Sixteen-year-old Mark was a huge lovestruck fanboy of “Take Me As I Am”-era Faith Hill, and the timing was perfect for her to grace my county fair with her presence in August 1994. Even though she didn’t lean in particularly heavily to her blue-eyed soul in that first album, she offered something distinctive vocally that was equal parts soft and intense. With the parallel career ascent of Shania Twain, it didn’t surprise me that Faith’s handlers put her on a more shameless pop track and I didn’t begrudge her that, but as with you, her career was moving in a different direction than I’d have preferred.
“The Way You Love Me” was, for me, the nadir of this embrace of bubblegum pop even though my relationship with the song was also complicated. I can’t seem to turn my radio off even now when it comes on and the earworm effect is real, but even by the standards of the airiest pop confectionaries, this one is as empty as an elevator car on a hypothetical 13th floor. And it’s still far better than Martina’s “I Love You” from the year prior.
I had mixed feelings on Faith’s “Cry” era but definitely thought it was an improvement from the “Breathe” era. I was grateful she was able to stage a well-deserved boomlet of a comeback in the mid-2000s but the damage was done. In the past decade, I’ve mostly been grateful that her close association with Tim McGraw enabled her to record some duets that have at least given her a marginal radio presence, which is more than can be said for Shania or even Martina in the past decade. Even so, she deserved better, but I think the pop sugar rush of songs like this one probably contributed to her flaming out ahead of schedule.
Grade: C
Agree with the “C” grade – this is either drivel or, at best, a mindless earworm.
I feel like you ignored an elephant in the room with the autotune. Jesus Christ the autotune.
This song may be the reason why country music, even in the bro country era, never embraced autotune.
I really liked the autotune effect on the Madonna album from this year because it was prominent and made the songs sound interesting. It’s too watered down here to even make this record sound interesting.
We’re in agreement on Faith and Breathe; I loved her first two records, and I thought This Kiss and Breathe were very good first singles from their respective albums. But by Breathe, the lovely phrasing and twange displayed on those first was sanded away and we were left with just another wannabe pop diva (don’t get me wrong, I liked Cry well enough, but but then, every succeeding album delivered diminishing returns). This song is fine; I liked it more then than I do now, though I don’t think it’s aged particularly well all things considered. Probably a B- from me.
I didn’t care much for this song the first few times hearing it, and I was generally not a fan of the pop crossover direction Faith was going with her music at the time. However, I eventually found myself actually enjoying it as a guilty pleasure after a while, and I’d always have the catchy melody and backup vocals stuck in my head. The bright, sunny feel of the song seemed to fit the mood of the seemingly more optimistic, exciting time of having just entered the 21st century in the Spring of 2000. Even today, whenever I hear it, it takes me back to the Spring and Summer of 2000, which was a much happier and exciting time for me, personally, and honestly I don’t even really feel guilty about liking it anymore because there’s now MUCH worse out there in mainstream country land. I long for the days when Shania, Faith, Martina, etc. represented pop country compared to pop country post bro-country.
I always thought the music video to the song was cute, as well, and I always loved how colorful it was and the different “roles” and costumes Faith wore throughout. The parts that show Faith in the car with her kids in the backseat are especially cute. Again, the bright and colorful look of the video and its silly, but creative concept seems to represent the much happier and optimistic feel of the time that it came out.
As for the autotune, the version sent to pop and adult contemporary radio and the one I occasionally heard in fast food restaurants had a LOT more autotune as I remember, especially in the female backup vocals.
I’m also in agreement with Kevin and Chris on the Faith and Breathe albums. I really enjoy most all the singles off of those albums, but there aren’t as many album cuts on them that I enjoy as much (I do really love “You Give Me Love” from Faith and “Me” is enjoyable for me, as well).
I really think it’s unfortunate how quickly her mainstream radio career ended when looking at how huge she was during this time. While her going further into the pop/crossover direction may have thrown some radio folks off, I tend to think another big part of it was radio generally moving away from female artists in the mid 2000s after the Chicks incident and country radio’s ageism being worse for women than men.
Btw, another poster above mentioned Martina’s “I Love You,” which is another bubbly, sunny, happy pop country song from this “Y2K” era that I still unapologetically enjoy today. Never fails to put me in a good mood whenever it hear it!
I’m glad to see all of the dislike for this song lmao. Because it was a big hit I thought I was in the minority, but I see other people cringe at it the way I do.
I don’t like “Where Are You Christmas?” catching a stray, though! I think it’s a beautiful song, though the production is a bit too AC.
I like “Where Are You Christmas” too! I never knew at the time its association with the animated movie where it originated from so I think that helped me take it more seriously as an introspective hyper-infusion of holiday sentimentality.
This performance has too much going on about nothing much at all. It sounds as though Hill has hitched her horse to the wrong wagon. Did she really lean so heavily into pop music to produce something like this?