Cole Swindell’s “Forever to Me”: The story behind the song

Robby Klein*

Cole Swindell draws on his story in his new single “Forever to Me.”

It’s the second time he’s sung about Carolina in the chorus of a song he aired on radio, following his 2022 release “She Had Me At Heads Carolina.” And a line in the bridge, “I wish you coulda met my daddy,” refers to 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 the story to anticipate the future, recounting his 2023 engagement that led to his wedding to former NBA dancer Courtney Little in California on June 12. “Forever to Me” marks the beginning of the next phase of his personal life, which is now unfolding in ways he had doubted.

“I always wondered if I was ever going to get married – otherwise you can’t have a song like that,” he says. “So for that to all happen in the space of a year, man, and to have (the song) out there and finally playing it live, it’s really cool.”

“Forever to Me” actually took more than three years to complete. Swindell had met Little at a NASCAR event and they became friends. But when his video team needed a love interest for his complicated 2021 video “Some Habits,” Swindell thought it would work better to shoot it with Little rather than an unknown model. While working on that particular song on a back road in Tennessee, a spark ignited and the two began dating.

“I felt like there was something there that day,” he recalls. “I don’t know if I thought we were going to get married, but I definitely knew that was what I was missing.”

In May 2023, Swindell planned to propose to her at the Academy of Country Music Awards in Texas, but just days before the event, he let his guard down and arranged a surprise visit to Little on the same back road called “Some Habits.” He got down on one knee in a wet field, she said “I do,” and while he was working on his next album, he regularly tried to write about the relationship for their first dance. Oddly enough, “Forever” was released at the same time as a football game.

Scheduled to headline a fancy private party in Houston on Jan. 7, the eve of the National College Football Championship, Swindell asked at the last minute Greylan James (“Next Thing You Know,” “Happy Does”) to accompany him and suggest a third songwriter. James chose Rocky Block (“Cowgirls,” “Man Made a Bar”). They wrote a few songs on the way to Houston and stayed on the bus late after the concert, talking — so long they watched the sun come up. They asked Swindell to describe his relationship, and he replied that Little was “for me forever.” His co-songwriters agreed that this would be the song they would write — after they slept.

When they woke up, James and Block worked on it a bit before Swindell was ready. James came up with an opening acoustic guitar riff that Swindell compared to a Keith Whitley vibe.

“That was a really targeted part,” says James.

They came up with the opening line of the chorus: “She gave Carolina 18 summers” — not quite the right number of years, but definitely the right state. “It was a bit of poetic license, but it got the message across,” Block notes. “We just wanted to say she grew up somewhere.”

Block controlled the melody at the end of the chorus, including the all-important opening line: “I might have given her the diamond, but she gave me eternity.” “I would never have sung that off the cuff,” says James. “It’s just a Rocky Block specialty.”

The word “gave” became an important stylistic device – “She gave 18 years…”, “I gave her a diamond…”, “She gave forever…” Swindell’s co-writers were very specific about that. “We kind of went with what else she gave in other places in the chorus,” says Block.

Swindell wasn’t even aware of it. “It was a lot of ‘gives,'” he says. “I didn’t even realize we had done it. It just felt right.”

One of the “gifts” – “I gave my knee a patch of grass” – is the kind of detail that makes “Forever” particularly personal. They originally started the verses with a line referring to Dallas, since that’s where he planned to propose to her. Combined with the references to Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, the geography seemed cluttered, but they kept it. Eventually, this became the second verse, since in the first he recounted how they met.

The song’s most powerful moment is the bridge. It includes a cultural reference: “She said yes to the dress with her mama,” because the writers specifically included Little’s mother in the lyrics. There, Swindell sings “I wish you could have met my daddy,” adding his own personal touch. And they included a mention of Jesus, suggesting that divinity plays a role in the relationship. It was only after writing the bridge that Swindell came up with the opening line, “Have you ever seen prayer in person?”, which connects the beginning and end of the song.

They had champagne on hand for the game, but they let it go early for an emotional toast. “We were holding glasses of champagne, hugging each other, and tears were flowing – because we felt every line of that bridge,” James recalls.

They barely made it to the stadium suite in time for the game, a sweeping Michigan victory over Washington. Numerous celebrities came and went, but the three writers kept going to a corner and playing a working tape of “Forever.” James paid special attention to the demo when he returned to Nashville, as the song was likely important to Swindell’s fiancée. The story made it one of Swindell’s most challenging vocal pieces.

“It was a completely different feeling — like, ‘Man, I can’t believe I’m singing this. I can’t believe I wrote this song,'” Swindell recalls. “I felt a lot of pressure to get it right.”

Little and the in-laws were delighted, although their ceremonial first dance ended up being accompanied by a different song. Meanwhile, Swindell struggled to record a final version. They made several attempts with different groups of musicians, but none of the results captured the emotion of the song like the demo did. Eventually, Swindell contacted producer Jordan M. Schmidt (Tyler Hubbard, Mitchell Tenpenny), who used much of Swindell’s vocals and some of James’ drumming from the demo. Schmidt hired drummer Nir Z to add light human drumming to the synthetic percussion, and he had Jonny Fung re-record the guitar parts.

Swindell had to rewrite the Dallas line, however, and had a long phone call with Block and James to change the lyrics. They changed the lines to “There ain’t no dancin’ around it/ When your whole world’s standin’ there.” This may be the only part of the song that Swindell re-sang during a final vocal session that took place under even greater pressure because the label had chosen “Forever” as a single and deadlines were looming.

Schmidt “was a big reason we were able to get it published,” Swindell says.

Warner Music Nashville released “Forever” to country radio via PlayMPE on April 12. The song peaked at No. 46 on the June 22 Country Airplay chart and documents his recent past as a newlywed.

“I’m literally at this stage in my life,” he says. “I’ll never talk about it more than I do now, and it kind of fits with what I’m going through right now. It just fits.”