Cole Swindell taps into his history on his new single, “Forever to Me.”
It’s the second time he’s sung about Carolina in the chorus of a song he issued to radio, following his 2022 release “She Had Me At Heads Carolina.” And a line in the bridge, “I wish you coulda met my daddy,” references the loss of his father, a life event that formed the backbone of his 2015 ballad “You Should Be Here.”
But “Forever to Me” also uses history to anticipate the future, recounting the 2023 engagement that led to his June 12 marriage in California to former NBA dancer Courtney Little. “Forever to Me” represents the start of the next phase in his personal life, now unfolding in a way he doubted it would.
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“I always wondered if I’d ever get married – you can’t really have a song like that if you don’t,” he says. “So for all this to happen within a year, man, and to have [the song] out there and finally be playing it live, it’s really cool.”
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“Forever to Me” is actually more than three years in the making. Swindell had met Little at a NASCAR event, and they struck up a friendship. But when his video team needed a love interest for his intricate 2021 video “Some Habits,” Swindell thought it’d work better to shoot it with Little than with an unfamiliar model. Working on that particular song on a Tennessee backroad created a spark, and the two began dating.
“The whole feeling on that day, I just felt like there was something,” he reflects. “I don’t know that I thought we’d be getting married, but I definitely knew that’s what I was missing.”
In May 2023, Swindell planned to pop the question in Texas in conjunction with the Academy of Country Music Awards, but just days before that event, he called an audible and arranged to take Little on a surprise detour to that same “Some Habits” backroad. He knelt on a soggy field, she said “yes,” and as he worked on his next album, he periodically attempted to write about the relationship for their first dance. Oddly enough, “Forever” arrived in tandem with a football game.
Swindell was to headline a swanky private party in Houston on Jan. 7, the eve of the National College Football Championship, and at the last minute, he asked Greylan James (“Next Thing You Know,” “Happy Does”) to join him and to suggest a third writer. James picked Rocky Block (“Cowgirls,” “Man Made a Bar”). They wrote a couple songs on the way to Houston, and after the concert, they stayed up late on the bus talking – so late that they saw the sun come up. They asked Swindell to describe his relationship, and he replied that Little is “forever to me.” That, his co-writers agreed, was the song they would write – after they slept.
When they awoke, James and Block worked on it a bit before Swindell was ready. James developed an opening acoustic guitar riff that Swindell compared to a Keith Whitley vibe.
“It was a really purposeful part,” James says.
They came up with the chorus’ opening line, “She gave 18 summers to Carolina” – not quite the correct number of years, but definitely the right state. “That was a little bit poetic license, but it got the point across,” Block notes. “We were just trying to say she grew up somewhere.”
Block controlled the melody at the close of that chorus, including the all-important set-up line, “I might’ve gave her the diamond/But she gave forever to me.” “I would have never sang that off the bat,” James says. “That’s just a Rocky Block special.”
The word “gave” became an important device – “She gave 18 years…,” “I gave her a diamond…,” “She gave forever…” Swindell’s co-writers were very specific about it. “We kind of went in on what else she gave [in] other places in that chorus,” Block says.
Swindell didn’t quite realize it was happening. “It is a lot of ‘gaves,’” he says. “I didn’t even notice that we had done it. It just kind of felt right.”
One of the “gaves” – “I gave a grass stain to my knee” – is the kind of detail that specifically personalizes “Forever.” Originally, they started writing the verses with a line that referenced Dallas, since that’s where he intended to propose. Along with the references to Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, the geography felt cluttered, but they kept it. Eventually, that became the second verse as he spent the first recounting how they met.
The song’s powerhouse moment comes with the bridge. It sews in a cultural reference, “She said ‘yes to the dress’ with her mama,” as the writers specifically included Little’s mother in the lyric. It’s there that Swindell sings “I wish you coulda met my daddy,” tying in his own personal note. And they included a mention of Jesus, suggesting divinity is involved in the relationship. It was only after writing the bridge that Swindell came up with the opening line, “You ever seen a prayer in person?,” tying the front and back of the song together.
They had champagne on hand for the game, but they broke it out early for an emotional toast. “We’re holding cups of champagne, hugging each other, and tears coming down — because we felt every line in that in that bridge,” James recalls.
They barely got to the stadium suite in time for the game, a Michigan blowout over Washington. Numerous celebrities wandered in and out, but the three writers kept going back to a corner and playing a work tape of “Forever.” James paid extra attention to the demo when he got back to Nashville, since the song was likely to be important to Swindell’s fiancée. The story made it one of Swindell’s most challenging vocals.
“It was a different kind of feeling — like, ‘Man, I can’t believe I’m singing this. I can’t believe I wrote this song,’” Swindell remembers. “I felt a lot of pressure to get it right.”
Little and the in-laws loved it, though another song eventually supported their ceremonial first dance. Meanwhile, Swindell struggled to record a final version of it. They made several attempts with different groups of musicians, but none of the results captured the song’s emotion the way the demo did. Ultimately, Swindell contacted producer Jordan M. Schmidt (Tyler Hubbard, Mitchell Tenpenny), who used much of Swindell’s vocal and some of James’ drum programming from the demo. Schmidt hired drummer Nir Z to mesh light human drum work into the synthetic percussion, and he had Jonny Fung redo the guitar parts.
Swindell still needed to rewrite the Dallas line, though, and he had a long phone call with Block and James to change the lyric. They turned the lines into “There ain’t no dancin’ around it/ When your whole world’s standin’ there.” It might be the only part of the song that Swindell re-sang during one last vocal session, held under more pressure, since the label had picked “Forever” as a single, and deadlines were imminent.
Schmidt “was a huge reason we were able to release it,” Swindell says.
Warner Music Nashville issued “Forever” to country radio via PlayMPE on April 12. It ranks No. 46 on the Country Airplay chart dated June 22, documenting his recent history as he steps into newlywed status.
“I’m literally in this season of my life,” he says. “I will never talk about it any more than I will now and this kind of goes along with what I’m going through. It just kind of fit.”
