Months before Christmas, Hill to bring 'Joy to the World'

Faith Hill's holiday album has been several years in the making. (BILL WAUGH/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

It's summer and it's hot, but even so, Faith Hill is quick to warm up to talk about Christmas. Which is more than appropriate as she sets up the first - and, quite possibly, only - Christmas album of her career, "Joy to the World," due Sept. 16 on Warner Bros.

While many Nashville-based artists record holiday records early and relatively often, Hill's was several years in the making and intended to be her definitive take on the season. "Joy to the World" is overwhelmingly a collection of standards, be it the big, booming orchestral arrangements of the title track or swinging, big-band, vintage-sounding versions of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

"I love everything about Christmas, and I have wanted to record a Christmas album since the beginning of my career," Hill says while taking a break from shooting video for potential TV spots promoting the record.

Despite the summer heat, Hill and her team have visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. "There's lots of holiday-themed thinking and discussion going on this summer," Hill's manager Gary Borman says. "For us this is more than a holiday record. It is an opportunity to share values, sensibilities and emotion, and we're excited to be able to do this."

Expectations are also high in the Warner Bros. offices, not just in Nashville from whence the album's setup and release will be steered. "Come Sept. 16, 'Joy to the World' will be a priority globally at Warner Bros. Records," Warner Bros. Nashville executive vice president Bill Bennett says.

There is good reason to prioritize "Joy," as holiday-themed records remain a lucrative niche for labels. Josh Groban's "Noel" (2007) has moved 6.7 million copies in the United States for Warner Bros.

Work on "Joy" started three years ago, but the project was sidetracked by Hill's 2005 album "Fireflies," last year's "Greatest Hits" album, and the Soul2Soul II tour with her husband, Tim McGraw.

When those projects wrapped, Hill returned to the Christmas album.

Song selection was one of the "toughest things" about putting the project together, Hill says. She wanted have the perfect team in place in the studio; the album's producers are Hill, Dann Huff, and Byron Gallimore, and the album was arranged and conducted by David Campbell and engineered by Allen Sides.

"It was absolutely crucial for David Campbell to be at the helm of this recording, and he did an amazing job arranging these songs that most of us know as standards," Hill says. "I explained to him what I wanted to convey in the music and he took it from there and just created this palette of beautiful arrangements."

Hill didn't take the easy road, instead choosing - and delivering - on challenging vocals, complicated lyrics and ambitious melodic structure. The album plays to her strengths as a Southern soulful chanteuse and also conjures a vintage feel that would work in any era.

"Fortunately, most of these songs I've known my entire life," she says, adding that she and Campbell took care to deliver the songs as written - even if they were written a century ago. "On some of them I was used to singing the lyric I grew up with, which was not really always the original lyric. I guess over time things just change, or people take their own interpretation of what the song was originally."

The more spiritual songs on the record, such as "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," "Joy" and "Silent Night," feature the Nashville String Machine with conductor Carl Gorodetzky and were recorded live in the studio with Hill's vocals. "I've performed with an orchestra but I've never recorded with an orchestra live," she says. "I don't read music, and certainly it was difficult for me to read the scores, I really couldn't. So David Campbell had quite a task put in front of him to direct the orchestra, as well as me. That was quite a challenge, but it worked out in the end."

Hill won't tour on this release, but a wide range of multimedia promotional initiatives are being lined up.