Gabby Barrett on Taking a Classic Emotional Approach in ‘Dance Like No One’s Watching’

Gabby Barrett on Taking a Classic Emotional Approach in ‘Dance Like No One’s Watching’. While celebrating Mother’s Day in the rearview mirror, the pop star Gabby Barrett is learning to better appreciate the parent/child relationship the holiday represents.

In successful child-rearing, Mom and Dad essentially make themselves obsolete after doting on the kids, sinking time and money into them, those children grow up, move away and create lives of their own. It makes things complicated, but there’s a sweet full-circle experience when the grown-up offspring come to understand the sacrifice that was involved in raising them as they, in turn, parent the next generation.

“I never understood that before I had kids,” Barrett says. “I’ve seen those relationships where it’s really difficult for parents to let their children go, you know, but they’re going to be adults longer than they’re going to be children, and having your mind set up that way will hopefully make it a little bit easier whenever that day comes.”

While Barrett is thinking about circle-of-life inevitability. She isn’t the only one as Luke Combs, also had an idea in 2022 to write about how letting go plays out in a father/daughter relationship.

Combs was trying to widen his creative relationships at the time, setting appointments with some of his frequent collaborators’ co-writers. And it was in that spirit that he proposed a writing appointment with regular co-writer James McNair (“Lovin’ On You,” “Glory Days”) and one of McNair’s professional partners, Emily Weisband (“Can’t Break Up Now,” “Looking for You”). When Combs extended the invitation, it fell during a week Weisband had intended to take off to prep for her wedding, but she couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

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

Luke Combs, McNair and Weisband met on Sept. 26 at Sony Music Publishing’s Fire Hall, spending about an hour chatting before Combs mentioned “Dance Like No One’s Watching,” an idea he had about the sweep of a father/daughter relationship. The setup for the day was perfect because a song about a daughter needed to have a female involved in its creation.

“I think in his brain it was this big, iconic wedding song,” recalls Weisband. “He was like, ‘If you can write one of those, they’re huge.’ And so we took on the challenge.”

They fell into a waltz time — not because the hook involved dancing, Weisband says, but because it felt “big and dramatic.” That’s certainly the tone they gave the chorus first, fitting the title to a languid melody with long notes.

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