Songfacts®:

• In this song, Faith Hill sings about sinking into an intimate moment with her lover. Being in his arms, the outside world slips away. They don't even have to talk, it's enough just to feel him breathe. We can assume that her husband, Tim McGraw, provided inspiration for her performance.
• "Breathe" was written by country singer-songwriters Stephanie Bentley and Holly Lamar. Bentley later co-wrote Martina McBride's "Concrete Angel," while Lamar co-wrote "Unbroken" for Hill's husband, Tim McGraw.
• Faith Hill is a country singer, but "Breathe" has massive crossover appeal and got played on a variety of radio formats. Country music launched into the mainstream in the early '90s as "new country" artists like Garth Brooks (the first country singer to have an album debut at #1 on the Billboard 200) infused their songs with pop and rock elements. Hill joined the movement with her pop-friendly 1998 album Faith and followed up with Breathe. The latter topped both the country and pop albums charts, and the title track was the #1 pop airplay song of 2000. Like Hill, several other female artists saw major crossover success around the same time, including Shania Twain, Martina McBride, and the Dixie Chicks.
• In 2001, "Breathe" won the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, and the album won for Best Country Album.
• Thanks to its 53-week run on the Hot 100, "Breathe" was named the #1 song on Billboard's year-end charts, even though the single never hit #1 (it was at #2 for five weeks). The only other songs to achieve this feat were "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs in 1965 and "Hanging By a Moment" by Lifehouse in 2001.
• This was featured on the TV shows The Sopranos ("Mergers and Acquisitions," 2002), Cold Case ("Dog Day Afternoons," 2006), and My Name Is Earl ("Buried Treasure," 2007).
• The music video drew some controversy from Nashville's conservative circles over seductive shots of Hill in bed, but the clip still won Top Video of the Year at the 2000 ACM Awards. It was directed by Lili Fini Zanuck, who made her mark in movies, producing the films Cocoon and Driving Miss Daisy, and directing Rush.The music video drew some controversy from Nashville's conservative circles over seductive shots of Hill in bed, but the clip still won Top Video of the Year at the 2000 ACM Awards. It was directed by Lili Fini Zanuck, who made her mark in movies, producing the films Cocoon and Driving Miss Daisy, and directing Rush.
• Songs about being enraptured in love were big at the time. When "Breathe" was near the top of the Hot 100, so were these songs:
  
  "I Knew I Loved You" by Savage Garden
  "Thank God I Found You" by Mariah Carey
  "Amazed" by Lonestar
• Country music parodist Cledus T. Judd skewered this as "Breath," a song about his girlfriend's wretched case of halitosis. He sings:
  
  I can smell the onions floating in the air
  Must be something that you ate