EDMONTON -- If there was a dry eye in the house, I didn't see it.

That could've been because my eyes were so misty.

Yes, I admit it - I shed man tears at last night's Faith Hill and Tim McGraw concert at Rexall Place. It didn't take long. Rising from within an "in the round" stage that looked like a giant pinwheel made of television screens, the king and queen of modern country music looked deeply into each other's eyes and expressed their deepest love for each other through their version of Chasing Cars, by Snow Patrol - a deeply romantic song as it is - and that was it for me. Here come the waterworks! Hey, dude, that's why they call it "emo."

OK, I lied. I didn't cry. The whole thing sounded like overdone '80s pop for my liking, so it was just a little chill from their rather nice version of the song - but I wanted to weep. It's OK for men to cry, right? Even Tim McGraw says so in his song Boys Don't Cry.

Anyway, that was only the first song. The siren spell of sentimentality that is the hallmark of hot country music would strike again several times. After an opening set by Lori McKenna - who would be perfectly at home at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival - Faith got the first crack at an adoring crowd of 17,000.

There was Hill's song Cry, in which she entreats a soon-to-be-former lover to show as much pain as she's feeling. There was Stronger, her powerful ballad which also urges an unnamed antagonist to shed some tears. Later came ABBA's bombastic yet still heart-tugging The Winner Takes It All and a battalion of mirror balls to complete the effect. She unleashed Breatheand polished us off with Piece of My Heart - I assume she has since had the opportunity to listen to Janis Joplin's version (which she hadn't when she first recorded it), because it sounded pretty faithful, give or take the backup band's anachronistic trip into Led Zeppelin.

Still to come during Tim's set, there lurked If You're Reading This, the touching tribute to fallen war heroes told from the point of view of a dead soldier to his family. Man. You'd have to be made of stone not to be moved by this one.

Such is the magic of hot country music. While purists might quibble that the Tim and Faith Soul2Soul II tour is "too rock" for country, the evening had all the same ingredients that fans of the Big Valley Jamboree should be intimately familiar with, the same roller coaster of emotion, the same sense of corny and loud fun balanced precariously with some of the most tear-jerking, heart-tugging, throat-lump inducing music known to man. They soften you up with hokum jokem and a battery of puns, songs like McGraw's Indian Outlaw spring to mind, then - wham! - hit you unawares with a poignant power ballad about a dead kid. The listener is left helpless in the face of such emotional G-forces. It's either cry or black out from lack of oxygen to the brain.

A wise man once said - and I think that wise man was Danny Hooper - that country music will get to you "if you let it." In other words, open your heart and your mind will follow.

As strong as Faith was in her set - looking and sounding just swell - McGraw's segment illustrated the country music happy-sad dichotomy more effectively. With his longtime band the Dancehall Doctors pumping out a slick wall of sound, McGraw opened his set with Steve Miller's The Joker, complete with its "I'm a midnight toker" line delivered with a straight face. From there, it was a more or less equal mix of rockin' country and country rock, many of the songs dealing with cheating and/or hurtin', with a handful of sentimental numbers like She's My Kind of Rain thrown in.

Faith, meanwhile, in a somewhat more "uptown" sort of set, threw in a love ballad every other tune.

Individually, they had moments to challenge the most man-tear phobic fan, but it was when they were together that the floodgates opened.

They were very convincing as a couple very much in love - no sign yet of strife from being with each other 24/7 - and so they should be as the reigning king and queen of country.

Have we used "king and queen of country" enough times to describe this pair?

Anyway, together they shine. From the rousing response from the opener, along with a pair of love ballads to intro Tim's set, to the (expected) show-stopping duet extravaganza, these were the highlights of the night.

You know, they really ought to team up more often.

This was the first of two almost sold-out shows, so one can cry a second time tonight.