McGraw on McGraw

Tim McGraw is enthusiastic about his new fragrance, McGraw — and he has an idea for expanding Coty's country influence: adding a little Faith to the mix.

That would be Faith Hill, McGraw's wife, whom he credits with helping him develop McGraw, the fragrance. "My wife and I had a great time just sitting and going through things and working on what we liked the best," he said during an interview Tuesday afternoon — a few hours before he gave a private concert for the press in celebration of his first men's scent, due out in August in the mass market. "She had a lot of input into it. I took stuff home, we tried things out and we gave samples to her friends."

In fact, McGraw said, the scent is so to Hill's liking that she now wears it herself. Which begs the question — is Hill next into Coty's celebrity stable? "I would love to see her have a fragrance, and us to have one together — a unisex fragrance," he said. "That would be wonderful." So, is he saying you gotta have Faith? Absolutely, but it will cost Coty, he cracked. "She's a lot more expensive than I am," he said with a laugh.

What do his friends think about the fragrance? "They laugh at me," he said with a deadpan expression. Don't they use fragrances? "They do, and they will. They're jealous!" he added with a laugh. "They want their own fragrance!"

McGraw professes to have loved the development process. "You always think as an artist that when you do these types of things, that you're not going to have any say-so in this, but these guys [at Coty] were great about letting me be involved in all aspects of it. As an artist, that's what you really look for." And he laughs off the art versus commerce question. "Art is commerce. And the only way around that is to make great art. If you make sh---y art, you should probably be worried about it. I've only had a handful of relationships with corporate America, because it's got to be a symbiotic relationship."