Tim McGraw Admits He and Faith Hill Both Cried When He First Played Her ‘I Called Mama’

Tim McGraw’s new single, “I Called Mama,” is bringing many fans to tears and according to the superstar, his biggest fan, his wife Faith Hill, also cried when she first heard the emotional song.

Rather than play her a demo or worktape, McGraw decided to give her an intimate performance of “I Called Mama,” but he had no idea how much of an impact it would have on the both of them.

“I wanted Faith to hear it, but I didn’t want to play it,” he recently explained to several members of the Nashville media. “It was just a guitar demo or a guitar worktape … I wanted to sing it to her. So I was trying to learn the words to it really quickly so I could sing her, you know, just the first verse and chorus.”

After working on it for about a half-hour, McGraw was ready.

“I said, ‘I want you to hear this song.’ So I sat down at the kitchen table and started singing it, and I couldn’t get through it,” he admitted. “I got to the chorus, and every time I tried to get to the chorus, I would fall apart on it. She would start crying because I was crying.”

“But,” he continued, “it really hit me in a way that, you know — it has a simple message to it, but it just means so much …”

“I Called Mama” was officially released just days before Mother’s Day and is resonating with fans everywhere. On the surface, the tune serves as a reminder for people everywhere to pick up the phone and call their moms, however, the message goes much deeper than that.

“Got a call from a friend about a friend/ It’s news no one ever wants to hear/ It hit me like a punch, it took my breath/ He was just gettin’ into his best years/Yeah, something like that’ll shake you up, wake you up,” McGraw sings on the first verse.

After taking a moment to decompress, McGraw turns to the one person he can count on to get him through a difficult time: his mother.

The song was originally slated to be an album cut on the superstar’s forthcoming album, however, as times changed, the song took on a whole new life.

“It was sort of unexpected in a lot of ways because I cut the song before all of this [COVID-19 quarantine] stuff happened … to add to the album I’ve been working on for a while, and it’s been just slowly cutting songs and mixing them and remixing them and putting music together. And I found these songs I wanted to go in and get done before the summer came and the [2020 Here on Earth] Tour came, and “Mama” was one of them,” McGraw recently explained.

“I Called Mama,” was written by Lance Miller, Marv Green and Jimmy Yeary and produced by McGraw and Byron Gallimore.