Luke Combs' 'Six Feet Apart': A song about social distancing makes listeners feel less alone

April 14 had been circled on Luke Combs’ calendar for a long time — well before the coronavirus pandemic threw a wrench into everyone’s plans.

The country star had a songwriting session scheduled with Nashville hit-makers Brent Cobb and Rob Snyder. As the nation began practicing social distancing, the trio planned to work together over Zoom instead.

They touched base over text messages the night before and realized they all had the same, unavoidable topic in mind.

“I think I just asked them out of the blue, 'Hey, do we write a song about this thing? Or is that too cheesy?' ” Combs recalls.

“They actually sent me an idea that they had, and the title was 'Six Feet Apart.' We were kind of on the same wavelength, without even talking to each other (about it). The next day, it felt like it wrote itself, really.”

And the day after that, Combs found out that millions of others were right there with them. He uploaded an acoustic performance of “Six Feet Apart” to YouTube, laying out all of the longing, uncertainty and hope he’d felt over the last month.

“I miss my mom, I miss my dad/ I miss the road, I miss my band/ Giving hugs and shaking hands...There will be light after dark/ Someday when we aren't six feet apart.”

Almost immediately, “Six Feet Apart” became one of the site’s top trending videos, racking up 2.5 million views. Last Saturday, the international audience tuning in to the Grand Ole Opry heard Combs play it live, too.

On Friday, a studio version hits all streaming services, putting it on track to be the first major country hit written and recorded during the pandemic — and wholly inspired by it.

The recording session was a new frontier, as well.

“Obviously, everyone was wearing masks and in separate rooms from each other,” Combs says. “I never even went in the same room as the band that was playing on it. … There were probably seven or eight people there, tops, including the band, myself, the engineer and his assistant. That was really it. They wiped everything down, and all the doors had been kept open so nobody had to grab the doorknobs.

“It was kind of strange, but it was also really cool, because I don't think I've ever been in the studio before where there wasn't something coming next, where it wasn't like, 'Man, I've got to fly out tonight' or 'I've got to play a show tomorrow, or interviews in the morning.' There was no stress from anything else about to happen.”

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For Combs, that’s been the upside to this unexpected downtime. He says he’s written a bunch of songs since being home, and the Zoom sessions have allowed him to hang out — virtually — with friends he hasn’t seen in a while. He’s enjoying “writing with no agenda.”

“It kind of feels like when I first moved to Nashville. That was what we did. We didn't have publishing deals. I didn't have a record deal, and neither did any of my buddies. We could do whatever we wanted as far as music goes.” 

He has at least one gig on the books. On Friday at 7 p.m. CT, he’ll stream a concert on his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Miller Lite is sponsoring the performance, and funds will support out-of-work bartenders nationwide.