Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you chart-topping songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, a chance after-hours encounter between a bar owner and a patron results in a marriage proposal in Brad Paisley’s country hit “We Danced.”
In the song written by Paisley and Charles Dubois, the narrator is a bar owner who is cleaning up after closing time. A woman, who had been in the bar earlier that evening, has returned to retrieve a misplaced purse. The two get lost in conversation, and the bar owner insists that the only way he’ll return the purse he had found earlier is if she agrees to dance with him.
With the chairs up and the lights turned down, the coupled danced — and instantly fell in love.
Paisley sings, “And from that moment, there was never any doubt / I had found the one that I had always dreamed about / And then one evenin’, when she stopped by after work / I pulled a diamond ring out of the pocket of my shirt.”
In a fun twist, the woman says she’ll marry him under one condition — that he agrees to dance with her.
“We Danced” was the fourth and final single from the 44-year-old singer-songwriter’s wildly successful 1999 debut album Who Needs Pictures. The song went to #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and was nominated for Song of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards.
That album helped launch a stellar career that claimed 32 top-10 singles on the US Billboard Country Airplay chart, 19 of which have reached #1. Paisley has sold more than 12 million albums, won three Grammy Awards, 14 Academy of Country Music Awards, 14 Country Music Association Awards and two American Music Awards. At the age of 28, he became the youngest artist ever to be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry.
A West Virginia native, Bradley Douglas “Brad” Paisley was introduced to country music by his grandfather, Warren Jarvis, who gave the eight-year-old his first guitar, a Sears Danelectro Silvertone. Jarvis taught his grandson to play, and by the age of 10 Paisley was already performing at his church.
While in junior high, Paisley was doing a show at a local Rotary Club, when he was discovered by a program director for a Wheeling, West Virginia, radio station. He was invited to be a guest on the popular radio show “Wheeling Jamboree” and the rest is history.
Please check out the audio track of Paisley’s “We Danced.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along…
“We Danced”
Written by Brad Paisley and Charles Dubois. Performed by Brad Paisley.
The bar was empty, I was sweeping up the floor
That’s when she walked in, I said, “I’m sorry but we’re closed”
And she said “I know but I’m afraid I left my purse”
I said, “I put one back behind the bar, I bet it’s probably yours”
And the next thing that I knew
There we were, lost in conversation
And before I handed her her purse
I said, “You’ll only get this back on one condition”
And we danced
Out there on that empty hardwood floor
The chairs up and the lights turned way down low
The music played, we held each other close
And we danced
And from that moment, there was never any doubt
I had found the one that I had always dreamed about
And then one evenin’, when she stopped by after work
I pulled a diamond ring out of the pocket of my shirt
And as her eyes filled up with tears
She said, “This is the last thing I expected”
And then she took me by the hand
And said, “I’ll only marry you on one condition”
And we danced
Out there on that empty hardwood floor
The chairs up and the lights turned way down low
The music played, we held each other close
And we danced
Like no one else had ever danced before
I can’t explain what happened on that floor
But the music played, we held each other close
And we danced, yeah, we danced
Credit: Photo by minds-eye (Brad Paisley) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
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