Song You Need to Know: Luke Combs, ‘Forever After All’

Luke Combs rattles off a list of things that eventually lose their shine in his viral new love song “Forever After All”: trucks break down, blue jeans fade, and, for some unfortunate reason, beer bottles all end up empty. For the entirety of his 30 years, Combs just accepted these tiny tragedies as facts of life.

And then he met the woman he was going to marry. Combs said, “I do,” in August to Nicole Hocking and both a marriage and a song were solidified.

“They say nothing lasts forever, but they ain’t seen us together,” the country-music superstar writes in the chorus, teeing up a gem of a payoff line that is so Nashville-clever you can’t believe someone didn’t have a hit with it already. “A love like that makes a man have second thoughts,” Combs sings, “Maybe some things last forever, after all.” (Grammar nerd alert: a simple comma makes all the difference!)

“Forever After All,” which Combs wrote by himself for his deluxe album What You See Ain’t Always What You Get, is currently Number One on the daily RS 100 chart. If it tops the official weekly version of the chart, it would mark Combs’ first Number One on the RS 100, and the first country song to top the chart. (His competition? Ariana Grande.)

Chart performance aside, it’s the genuine, vulnerable emotion Combs put into “Forever After All,” a ballad accented by gentle piano, that makes it so special. While many country hits pair a singer with someone else’s words, this is a glimpse straight into a love-struck dude’s heart, a guy who’s witnessed his new bride, sans makeup, in “just a T-shirt in the kitchen.”

Alas, every flesh-and-blood union ends at a graveside at some point. But bad things — like, say, pandemics, presidencies, and the pain of life-and-death separation — aren’t permanent either. Combs is sure of this, and when he sings “Heaven knows that that won’t last too long,” he makes you believe it too.

Find a playlist of all of our recent Songs You Need to Know selections on Spotify.