What is the most used first dance song?
A not-so-breaking news alert incoming: I like Olivia Dean.
She’s the exact breath of fresh air modern popular music needed, built on a rich foundation of live and warm instrumentation, that focuses on genuine songwriting merit as opposed to crafting an inescapable earworm.
But sadly, in the process of fine-tuning her artistic voice, the sharp claws of social media have snatched some of her music and commandeered it into something larger and undeniably different to what she had intended. You simply cannot turn any corner of our densely populated internet space without hearing the chorus line of her latest single ‘Man I Need’, to a point where it’s borderline contaminated any opportunity to listen to it and craft your own unique experience of it.
It’s marred with the context of whatever reel it’s been placed upon, and while it’s brought with it wild success, I can’t help but feel an artist with her level of integrity will understand just how harmful this might be for the sanctity of her own song. Without her design, it has become the ‘Thinking Out Loud’ of the modern era.
That song, upon its release in 2014, became universally played across all weddings in the world. Despite my journalistic cynicism, on the whole, I can’t blame those who may have used it because it surely hits all the notes you’re looking for.
But therein lies my Olivia Dean comparison. In fact, therein lies my overall struggle with listening to the likes of Oasis. When a song becomes so universally adopted to soundtrack a spectrum of life highlights, it becomes harder and harder to project your own personal perception on the song. Memories of friends, acquaintances and even strangers all pollute your own and sadly remove the detailed moments of nuance that made you fall in love with that song in the very first place.
When it comes to love, through, idiosyncrasy might be harder to come by than you think. It is, after all, the most spoken about subject in all of music, and so when it comes to choosing the song to soundtrack your one undying moment of love, how do you find something that hasn’t already been thought about?
So, what is the most common wedding dance song?
Well, there is no definitive data that tracks all weddings, across time and their subsequent first dance songs, but there is data compiled by Hitched’s National Wedding Survey, which analysed stats from over 3,000 couples who got married in 2024 to find out what was the most commonly used song in the UK. Strap in, though, it doesn’t make for pleasant reading.
Number one was Ed Sheeran’s sentimental mate, Taylor Swift, with her song ‘Lover’. It’s as close to a fairytale song as I have ever heard in my life, and sadly contradicts our country’s reputation for being more understated in our declarations. While I’m not all that surprised, I am shocked that Elvis Presley’s ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ follows in at second.
Behind those two are a selection of tracks that hit all the corny yet sentimental notes: ‘Perfect’ by Ed Sheeran, ‘At Last’ by Etta James and ‘You’re Still The One’ by Shania Twain.
