A first dance is a long-held tradition at weddings, where the song choice can make or break the moment. Luckily for newlyweds everywhere, there are plenty of excellent songs to choose from, particularly in the country genre. Read on to see three such tracks.
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“Amazed” by Lonestar
Released in 1999, Lonestar’s “Amazed” reads as if it were written specifically for someone’s first dance. “I don’t know how you do what you do / I’m so in love with you / It just keeps gettin’ better / I wanna spend the rest of my life / With you by my side / Forever and ever,” the band sings on the track.
When writers Marv Green, Aimee Mayo, and Chris Lindsey penned the track and gave it to Lonestar, they were handing the band their biggest hit ever. “Amazed” is Lonestar’s longest-lasting No. 1 hit, having spent eight weeks atop the Billboard country chart.
“I knew it was gonna be big,” Dean Sams told American Songwriter in 2023 of the track, before Michael Britt reflected on its staying power.
“That’s one of the songs now that it doesn’t belong to us anymore. That song is the fans’ song, and I never get tired of playing that,” he said. “There’s something about the build in that song, the way the key changes from part to part, and it never sits in the same spot and gets boring. It always just lifts and builds, and the crowd feeds off of that.”
“Die A Happy Man” by Thomas Rhett
Thomas Rhett’s “Die A Happy Man” is a love letter to the singer’s wife, Lauren. Released in 2015, the song peaked at No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the outlet’s country chart. “If I never get to see the Northern Lights / Or if I never get to see the Eiffel Tower at night / Oh if all I got is your hand in my hand / Baby I could die a happy man,” Rhett croons on the track.
In an interview with Taste of Country Nights, Rhett expressed his hope that people would dance to the track at their weddings.
“I hope one day it becomes a lot of people’s wedding songs,” he said. “It’s a super, super, super love song. I wrote it about my wife.”
“Forever After All” by Luke Combs
Luke Combs’ 2020 track “Forever After All” is an achingly romantic track about his wife, Nicole. The tune was wildly successful commercially as well. It peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and took the top spot on the outlet’s country chart.
“They say nothing lasts forever / But they ain’t seen us together,” Combs sings on the track. “Or the way the moonlight dances in your eyes / And I know there’ll be that moment / The good Lord calls one of us home and / One won’t have the other by their side / But heaven knows that that won’t last too long / Maybe some things last forever after all.”
Combs penned the track with Drew Parker and Rob Williford in his and his now-wife’s Nashville home shortly after they got engaged.
“I think there was something special in that moment of it being the first song in their house together, and we kind of just started chasing a love song, and it really took on its own thing,” Parker told The Boot. “It was like, ‘Hey, I think this is something important to say in a time like this—I mean, we just bought a house together,’ that kind of thing. And at that point, it’s like, ‘Hey, let me just step out of the way and watch where he’s wanting to go with this and be there to support wherever that song goes.’”
Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images
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