Tim McGraw Reveals What Faith Hill Thinks About ‘Neon Church’

Tim McGraw released his brand-new single “Neon Church” on Thursday, Oct. 4, with the song finding McGraw looking for solace in a honky tonk after suffering a broken heart.

The song is McGraw’s first solo release after his 2017 duet album with wife Faith Hill, and the singer told Taste of Country Nights that Hill is fully on board with the metaphorical track.

“She’s got a lot of favorites on the record we are working on, but this is one that she really gravitated to,” McGraw shared of his wife. “She didn’t have any complaints with this being the first single. She loves the guitars on it and loves the lyric.”

“I need Jesus or I need whiskey,” the song begins, “Whatever works best to get me through / Gettin’ over you.”

“Neon Church” goes on to find McGraw’s heartbroken character attempting to drink his heartbreak away, comparing a bartender to a preacher and a whiskey to holy water as he sings, “I need a neon church / with a jukebox choir / full of honkytonk angels with their wings on fire.”

Though McGraw didn’t write the song, he shared on the Ty, Kelly & Chuck show that he was instantly drawn to it after hearing the opening line.

“I think when you hear an opening line like ‘I need Jesus or I need whiskey,’ that’s one of the great opening lines of all times of a country song, and I fell in love with that,” the star said. “And then every lyric that comes after that is so well-placed. Nothing’s out of place with that lyric. We wanted to go in and cut a record that had a little bit of a Journey/Prince vibe that’s leading more modern at the same time. So we wanted these really big Prince-sounding guitars on it.”

“Neon Church” was written by Ross Ellis, Ben Goldsmith and Ben Stennis, and McGraw noted that his experiences touring in bars and clubs helped him relate to the song’s message.

“You spend so much time playing the clubs, and it’s such a parallel, the whole ‘Neon Church’ vibe, it’s such a parallel to church in a lot of ways,” he explained. “It’s a different side of the same coin. You see people at different stages of their life. Happy, sad, falling apart, getting together – all these things from the pulpit I guess, when you’re up on stage and you’re the artist performing, you get to see a lot of life stories going on.

“And this song sort of reminded me of that,” he added. “And the same thing with church. You go to church, they’re some of the happiest times of your life and some of the saddest times of your life at church.”

In his Instagram post announcing the release of “Neon Church” and bonus song “Think About You,” McGraw explained that the two songs are a good representation of where he’s headed with his next album.

“Both these songs were ready to be heard and will absolutely give a sense of where I’m going with my next project,” the Louisiana native wrote. “They’re meaningful to me and show the diversity of what I’ve been working on musically, I hope you like em!”

Photo Credit: Getty / John Shearer