Why Luke Combs Couldn’t Sing the Song He Wrote for Gabby Barrett Himself
Gabby Barrett has been dropping lots of hints about her upcoming sophomore album lately, which includes a song that Luke Combs wrote. Combs is no stranger to writing hits for other artists — he's one of the pens behind Carly Pearce's "I Hope You're Happy Now," for example — but of course, he's also a hit recording artist in his own right.
Ahead of her late-April performance at Stagecoach, Barrett explained to ET Online that there was one big reason why Combs wanted her to cut this particular song instead of recording it himself.
Both Barrett and Combs have young kids, and "that's actually what connected us on the song," Barrett reveals, going on to tell the full story of how the song landed in her lap.
"I was sitting in the bathtub one day. I heard my phone ding, and he had texted me, and explained that this song was written with a couple of friends," she recounts. "It wasn't gonna work for him because he didn't know if his child — his wife was still pregnant at the time, with their first baby, and they didn't know if it was a girl or a boy. Come to find out it was a boy — this song was written more for a girl."
Combs wound up having a baby boy named Tex in June 2022. But Barrett is mom to a daughter: She and her husband Cade Foehner welcomed baby girl Baylah in January of 2021.
"He knows that I have a daughter. So, it really resonated with me, and it fits perfectly," Barrett adds.
She hasn't officially released that song yet, but Barrett has teased a song that seems like it might be the one Combs wrote for her album. Based on the snippet she's released thus far, it's easy to see how the lyrics might have been written from the perspective of a parent to a daughter.
"He said, 'Dance like no one's watching / Whatever you do / And if life gives you love, fall in / But always be you," one portion of the lyrics reads. "'Cause girl, it's a big world / And it's so easy to get lost in / So dance like no one's watching."
In the same interview, Barrett offered an album timeline update, saying that fans can expect to get their hands on the project sooner rather than later.
"We're almost finished with it. It should come out this year. Hopefully, like, early fall is the goal," she relates.
"I'm way more intentionally connected to these songs than my first album, I would say," she goes on to say. "Every song moves me in a certain way, and it's just more grown up...the past years that I've lived, I've lived a lot of years in a short amount of time. It's grown up, it's fresh, and I'm hoping people really can resonate with it."
When her sophomore album arrives, it'll be the follow-up to Barrett's hit studio debut, Goldmine, which came out in 2020.
See American Idol Contestants Then and Now