Luke Combs might be known mostly for his rowdy songs in country music, but he also has a softer side. The father of two has, on more than one occasion, managed to release songs that evoke deep feelings. We found four songs that make us feel everything - happy, sad, contemplative and more - all at once.
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1. "Even Though I'm Leaving"
Luke Combs released "Even Though I'm Leaving" in 2019, from his sophomore What You See Is What You Get album. Combs wrote the song with Wyatt Durrette and Ray Fulcher. "Even Though I'm Leaving" is about a son begging his father not to leave, at various stages through his life.
"It's okay, I know you're scared, I might be here," Combs sings. "But I'll always be right there / Even though you're leavin', I ain't goin' nowhere." Interestingly, Combs wrote the song before he even married Nicole Hocking and became a father to their two sons.
"My parents always used to tuck me in at night, and make sure there wasn't a bogeyman behind the curtains or whatever," Combs tells The Boot. "We just started going down that road, and it kind of led to the 'Even Though I'm Leaving' thing. We were like, 'Okay, where do we take this song from here?' And where it ended up going was just kind of the natural progression."
2. "Doin' This"
Combs had a No. 1 hit with "Doin' This" in 2021. The song says in part, "I'd still be the same guy they knew back in the day / Who was burning CDs just to give away / Paying his dues, if I wasn't doin' this."
"Doin' This." from Combs' Growin' Up record, was inspired by a question he often gets asked in interviews.
"We were sitting in the man cave at my house, and we couldn't come up with anything to write about," Combs recalls (via Yahoo!). "We were on the back porch talking. I get asked in interviews a lot, 'What would you be doing if you weren't doing this."
"There was never a plan B," he remarks. "Once I decided that this is what I was going to do, it was at this level or at the level that I was at when I started. I would be chasing this."
3. "Love You Anyway"
"Love You Anyway" is part sweet love story, and part romantic angst. The multi-platinum 2023 single was written by Combs, Fulcher and Dan Isbell. The song is about the depths of love someone feels for someone else, even if that love isn't reciprocated.
"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," the song says in part.
"Love You Anyway" was actually born of another one of Combs' songs, "Beautiful Crazy," written about his wife. Combs was performing the song during a Valentine's Day concert in 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.' Unknown to me, my buddy Dan wrote down 'Love You Anyway' as a title in his phone," Combs recalls.
"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 adds.
4. "One Number Away"
The tension is almost palpable in Luke Combs' 2018 "One Number Away" single. Written by Combs, along with Sammy Mitchell, Steven Battey and Robert Williford, the song is about a guy who is one number away from calling a woman he loves and rekindling their romance.
"Might be the whiskey or the midnight rain," Combs croons. "But everywhere I go I see your face / In my brain, dial it up, everything I want to say / But I'm still one number away."
Surprisingly, it was only the second time the four of them had written together.
"Steven is an incredible melody guy," Combs tells The Boot. "So he said that he had this melody in his head that he really liked, and started humming the chorus of it. We just sat with it for a while. ... It turned out to be pretty cool, I think. It wound up being one of my favorite songs on the record."
