On This Day in 1998, Faith Hill Released an Iconic Hit “Co-Written” by Cleopatra and Originally Intended for Britney Spears

The legacy of Faith Hill’s 1998 crossover hit from her third studio album, Faith, is remarkable. Indeed, it’s both one of the catchiest earworms of late 1990s country and one of the only songs that makes us sing the word “centrifugal” with our whole chest. For the many people who already started singing the chorus, this song needs no introduction. It is, of course, “This Kiss”, the head-over-heels country anthem about “perpetual bliss” and “that pivotal moment” that’s “ah, impossible.” You know the one.

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Yet, as impressive as “This Kiss” is in terms of catchiness and use of four-syllable physics terms, these aren’t the only extraordinary things about this song. Perhaps most notable is the fact that, for a brief moment, Faith Hill wasn’t in the running to record it. In fact, the songwriters didn’t intend for the track to be in the country music world at all.

According to songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman, during a 2021 appearance on the Playing It By Ear podcast, “This Kiss” was originally a pop song, not a country song. Chapman and her co-writers, Robin Lerner and Annie Roboff, imagined someone like Britney Spears, Brandy, or Patti LaBelle for it. When they did finally transition to country music, they started with The Judds, then Trisha Yearwood.

How Faith Hill (And Cleopatra) Helped Turn “This Kiss” Into the Hit We Love

While speaking to the Playing It By Ear podcast, Beth Nielsen Chapman recalled finding out that Faith Hill was in the process of cutting her third studio album, Faith. So, the songwriters revisited “This Kiss” and “dressed it up in a different outfit” to present to Hill. They stripped back the instrumental arrangement and added steel guitar, giving it that quintessentially “late 90s country” feel. “When you do that, you give the song a chance to be heard a different way,” Chapman explained (via SongFacts). “Then, right away, it was cut by Faith.”

Another interesting anecdote is a bit of time-traveling co-writing from Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, from 51 to 30 BC. According to Chapman, the songwriters were working on the second verse—the one where Cinderella and Snow White are gossiping about the woes of love—when Chapman suggested the line, “Cleopatra was a snowflake.” Her co-writers shot down the idea. But Chapman knew that something about the four-syllable word that starts with a consonant and ends with a vowel felt good to sing. So, she kept chipping away at the idea.

Eventually, she realized the name she was looking for was Cinderella, not Cleopatra. “Then, all of a sudden, ‘Cinderella said to Snow White, how does love get so off course?’” Chapman said in a 2016 interview with Sodajerker. “It becomes this conversation between two iconic girls talking about getting kissed, and it fit the song beautifully. [The writers] were all on board at that point. They’re like, ‘Oh, what a great idea!’ I’m like, ‘It wasn’t my idea. It was Cleopatra’s idea!’ You have to be willing to listen to Cleopatra when she comes through.”

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