Luke Combs has had plenty of success with songs that he wrote with intention, often in a writing room, working on an album. But one of his biggest hits began in an unlikely place, during one of his concerts.
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On February 14, 2020, Combs was at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky, doing a show. His then-fiancée, Nicole Hocking, was with him, although she was under the weather at the time. When he began to sing “Beautiful Crazy“, a song that was inspired by her, he dedicated the song to his future wife.
“[I] said something along the lines of, ‘If you’re in here, I love you. If not, you know I do anyway,” Combs recalls to his record label.
Combs’ friend, Dan Isbell, wrote that line down. They later wrote “Love You Anyway” with Combs’s frequent collaborator, Ray Fulcher. The song says, “If your kiss turned me to stone / I’d be a statue standing tall in ancient Rome / And if your touch shattered me like glass / I’d be in pieces trying to make the breaking last / If it took one look to turn my days to night / At least I’d have the stars that sparkle in your eyes / There’s just some things that leave a man no choice / Like a compass needle needing its true North / Even if I knew the day we met you’d be the reason this heart breaks / Oh, I’d love you anyway.”
How Luke Combs Wrote “Love You Anyway”
As soon as Isbell told Combs about the idea for the song, Combs loved it. The song, about a relationship that may or may not work out, isn’t autobiographical to Combs, who wed Hocking in 2020. Still, the Grand Ole Opry member loves the song
“We loved the idea as a title, and decided to write about loving someone so much that even if you knew from the beginning they were going to break your heart, you’d love them anyway,” Combs explains.
The irony isn’t lost on Combs that it’s “Beautiful Crazy” that led to “Love You Anyway”.
“Long story short,” Combs says, “me dedicating a song I wrote about Nicole ended up turning into another song about Nicole. … It’s a special one to me.”
“Love You Anyway” is on Combs’s fourth studio album, Gettin’ Old. The song is now one of his biggest hits. But although he instantly loved the song, he was surprised that fans didn’t latch onto it as much as he hoped, at least at first.
“It didn’t really get the response I thought it was going to get,” Combs tells Billboard, recalling when he first posted a video of himself singing the song, soon after they wrote it. “A couple years later, I think we put it on TikTok or something, people were freaking out over it. It’s interesting. That’s probably the first song of mine that I’ve seen work like that.”
Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images
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