Gabby Barrett on Classic Emotional Approach to 'Dance Like No One's Watching'

With Mother's Day in the mirror, Gabby Barrett is learning to better appreciate the parent/child relationship the holiday represents.

In successful parenting, mom and dad essentially become obsolete – after they deal with children, sink time and money into them, those children grow up, move away and create their own lives. It makes things complicated, but there's a sweet full-circle experience when adult offspring understand the sacrifice involved in raising them as they, in turn, parent the next generation.

“I never understood that before I had kids,” says Barrett. “I've seen those relationships where it's really hard for parents to let their kids go, you know, but they're going to be adults more than they're going to be kids, and I hope that setting your mind like that will make it a little bit easier when that day comes.”

Barrett isn't the only person thinking about the inevitability of the cycle of life. So did Luke Combs, who had an idea in 2022 to write about how letting go plays out in a father/daughter relationship. Combs was trying to expand his creative connections at the time, making appointments with some of his frequent co-writers. And it was in that spirit that he suggested a writing appointment with regular co-writer James McNair (“Lovin' On You,” “Glory Days”) and one of McNair's professional collaborators, Emily Weisband (“Can't Break Up Now, ” “Looking for you”). When Combs sent out the invitation, it fell within a week that Weisband intended to take off to prepare for her wedding, but she couldn't pass up the opportunity.

“I'm a big fan of Luke,” he says. “And I'm a big fan of the way he does business and the way he stays so connected and loyal to his friends.”

Combs, McNair and Weisband met Sept. 26 at Sony Music Publishing's Fire Hall, spending about an hour chatting before Combs brought up “Dance Like No One's Watching,” an idea he had for scanning a father/daughter relationship . The set up for the day was perfect because a song about a daughter had to have a woman involved in its creation.

“I think he had this big, iconic wedding song in his mind,” Weisband recalls. “He was like, 'If you can write one of these, it's huge.' And that's how we responded to the challenge.”

They fell into an hour-long waltz—not because the hook involved dancing, Weisband says, but because it was “big and dramatic.” That's definitely the tone they set first in the chorus, fitting the title into a languid melody with long notes.

“The Great Drawn Tune,”Daaaance liiiike noooooo ooooone's watching,I just felt like this is a singer's song,” explains Weisband. “So [we] let the notes linger, let it flow. It doesn't have to be very explicit. It just has to be pure emotion. I definitely think we had to get that part right first.”

This chorus included her father's encouragement to accept the danger of love should it arise, unwittingly mirroring the encouragement in Lee Ann Womack's “I Hope You Dance.”

When the chorus was mostly over, they started building the rest of the story. The first verse was based, in part, on Weisband's memory of a father/daughter Valentine's dance in elementary school, when her dad guided her through her insecurities about dancing in front of her classmates. Verse two zooms in on dad helping pack the trunk as the protagonist leaves for college — shades of the Chicks' “Wide Open Spaces.”

Weisband had mentioned while writing the chorus that she and her father had taken lessons for the first dance at her wedding — “Hey, that's the bridge,” Combs told her — and reversed the sentiments from the Valentine's dance to this segment, with daughter coaching dad during the wedding dance to stay cool: “Don't look at mom.” Although they consider it a bridge, it is literally a third verse, using the established verse melody.

“When I say 'bridge,' it was just that last thing that will really put the dagger in the heart,” he notes.

Weisband played “Dance Like No One's Watching” for her dad later that week and managed to hold it together. “I remember him saying, 'That's good,' and just turning away,” she says. “He had to wait until my wedding to say, 'This song is amazing.' ”

Between her wedding on October 1st, her honeymoon and moving into a new house, it was weeks before she completed the demo. The day he sent it to Combs, he texted it to Barrett, who he always envisioned as the beneficiary of their work. Barrett was taking a leisurely bath when the phone rang and held the cell tightly as “Dance” connected with her on an emotional level. “Luckily, I didn't drop it in the water,” he says.

“Dance” resonated with Barrett as a mom — she gave birth to her third baby, Ivy Josephine Foehner, on Feb. 17 — but it also spoke to her own transition into adulthood.

“The line 'Girl, it's a big world/ And it's so easy to get lost in' — that line hits me and just brings back memories of really starting to do things on my own,” she says.

He joined a band of players at Nashville's Blackbird Studios to record “Dance,” the first time he was able to do so. The vocals on her first album, recalls producer Ross Copperman (Dierks Bentley, Darius Rucker), were either from songwriting demos or done remotely during the pandemic. The band matched her emotions, dressing her performance in a quiet fragility.

Barrett returned to Blackbird later to do the final vocals, conveying the parent/child story with all the right emotions, though she remained almost motionless in the process.

“She was so pregnant,” says Copperman. “She was sitting on a stool, and it was just flying out of her mouth. You're like, “Wow, how did that happen?” “

McNair orchestrated Combs' participation on backing vocals. Combs never steals the show – there are moments when he sounds like him, though he's mostly hidden behind Barrett, acting very much like a backup singer. In the final seconds, though, he aligns his harmonies with Barrett's curly melodic ad-lib.

“This guy is such a good singer,” says Copperman. “I wouldn't have followed that three-pointer. I would have just gotten off that note. But it's nice, and it's also nice how intentional he was with singing the harmony. Most people wouldn't have gone that deep into a harmony.”

Warner Music Nashville released “Dance Like No One's Watching” to country radio via PlayMPE on March 8th. The plot is timeless, but it will have a special impact next month as the calendar approaches Father's Day.

“It becomes a song to create new special memories, like daddy/daughter dances or school functions or weddings,” says Barrett. “I'm getting all these sweet clips from fans sharing this moment with me and seeing my fans create key memories. It's so amazing that they think of me to share their moment forever.”