Luke Combs has yet another hit on his hands, this one a ballad inspired by his wife, Nicole. The country music superstar, who recently had a No. 1 song with his cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” now has another successful single, this time with “Love You Anway.”
Combs wrote the song, which is the debut single from his latest Gettin’ Old album, with Ray Fulcher and Dan Isbell. The song begins with the lines, “If your kiss turned me to stone / I’d be a statue standing tall in Ancient Rome,” a lyric that helped set the tone, and the imagery, for the rest of the song.
“I just loved the way that that sounded,” Combs told Billboard. “It just adds this unique color, to me, that doesn’t necessarily have any particular meaning behind it. But a statue in ancient Rome feels cooler to me than a statue that exists today.”
Combs previously said that he had the idea for “Love You Anyway” when playing a different romantic song, also inspired by his wife, while at a live show.
“Valentine’s Day 2020. I was playing a show and had dedicated ‘Beautiful Crazy’ to Nicole and said, ‘If you’re in here (the arena), I love you. If not, you know I do anyway,’” Combs explained on social media. “Unknown to me, my buddy Dan wrote down ‘Love You Anyway’ as a title in his phone after hearing that, then he told me the story later that month when he and I were writing with my good friend Ray Fulcher.
“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,” he continued. “It came off very poetic and we wanted to find the words that could really give meaning to what we were trying to say, but as we say in the song, we didn’t know if there were deep enough words made for that.”
Combs is currently overseas on his massive World Tour. He will embark on his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour on March 12 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, playing back-to-back shows in most cities, with Cody Jinks, The Avett Brothers and Haily Whitters among those opening for Combs on Friday nights, and Jordan Davis, Mitchell Tenpenny, Drew Parker and Colby Acuff opening for Combs for the Saturday night shows.
Find music and tour dates at LukeCombs.com.
