Then

Brad Paisley is best known for guitar playing and comic songs, but Then, released in 2009 as the lead single from American Saturday Night, is a plain ballad that became one of his biggest hits. The lyric looks back to a first meeting, a porch kiss and a proposal, and finds that each time the singer thought he could not love his partner more, he was wrong. That idea of a love still growing makes it a favourite for long standing couples. The tempo is slow with a soft rhythm section and one of Paisley's more restrained solos. He wrote it with Chris DuBois and Ashley Gorley, and it was his tenth consecutive country number one.