Luke Combs’ “She Got the Best of Me” took a steady climb up the charts in 2018. The country rock ballad features everything that makes Combs great: an unforgettable melody, a gripping narrative, and of course, his incomparable vocals. Uncover the meaning behind this ode to young love, below.
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Behind the Meaning of Luke Combs’ “She Got the Best of Me”
Seventeen, you don’t think that much about life
You just live it
Like kerosene dancin’ around a fire
But you’re in it
“I don’t know if every song is historically accurate,” Combs once said. “You obviously write songs with other folks – at least I do – so there’s bits and pieces of kind of all of our experiences in there.”
With that quote in mind, we can’t exactly deem “She Got the Best of Me” as a personal anecdote from Combs’ life. But, what’s great about this song, is its universal themes. Anyone could find something to relate to in this story of young love–and subsequent heartbreak.
So you jump right in
Ain’t afraid to fall
And you give it all
Combs wrote this track when he was in college. It would be several years until the song got a splashy release. This track proves just how adept Combs was at songwriting from the earliest days of his career.
“What happened was, I was still in college when I came and wrote with them and wrote the song; I was still in school, living in North Carolina,” Combs once said. “So we ended up writing it [when] I was just in town visiting. I went back to Boone and started playing the song out at my little gigs and stuff, and eventually came back to Nashville a few months later and recorded that song. I put it out that year — it was like July of 2014 — put it out on my own.”
She got the best of me
She broke my heart
Now all that’s left of me
Is beatin’ in this guitar
Every night, a different town
The narrative follows a 17-year-old who experiences heartbreak for the first time. It’s rife with pain and the exuberance of youth. In the chorus, he reveals that though he’s moved on, there is a piece of him missing. Yeah you get what’s left of me / ‘Cause she got the best of me, he sings.
She follows me around
So you get what’s left of me
Yeah you get what’s left of me
‘Cause she got the best of me
Revisit this Combs hit, below.
Photo by Suzanne Cordeiro/Shutterstock
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