According to Harvard University, crying is an activity filled with health benefits.
And Luke Combs’ Gettin’ Old track, “Take You With Me,” is guaranteed to get you there.
Every generation has artists they feel like they’ve grown up with, and for my generation, Luke Combs is a big one. I quite literally went to the same university as Luke and overlapped with him there, and ever since have found us hitting many of life’s milestones in quick sequential order.
So for me, Gettin’ Old really is filled to the brim with nostalgia.
Of all of the tracks give off that sentiment, one that really caught me in my feelings was “Take You With Me,” a song where Luke reflects on his close childhood relationship with his father while simultaneously transforming into the fatherhood role himself.
The song recalls core memories that many of us have with our fathers – all deriving from the desire for them to “take us with them” as they went about their daily tasks and chores.
It really took me right back to the days of begging to go to work with my dad when he’d leave in the mornings, and him oftentimes succumbing to that request and just taking me along with him:
“A few years down the road, packin’ a cooler and a sandwich
Clingin’ to his leg, guess he could tell I couldn’t stand it
He said, Go hug your mama and I’ll go grab my keys
I’ll take you with me”
It’s hard not to get teary-eyed just thinking about all those small but wonderful moments we experience in our childhood that still stand out to us with that hindsight perspective.
In addition to perfectly choreographing this reminiscent feeling, Luke lines the verses up to show his experience from a little boy to his own son’s experience with him in the dad role. And even though the song includes all of the key parts of building nostalgia, it doesn’t get too sappy or sad in any regard – which makes it even better, in my opinion.
“Got a youngin’ of my own, he’s too young to understand it
When he gets a little older, watching the stage where I’m standin’
He’ll know it’s about him when he hears me sing
‘I’ll take you with me'”
It’s the kind of truth-telling, hard hitter we’ve come to love and expect from Luke Combs, but with all of the unbridled growth of becoming a mature man that we didn’t see in his early rebellious years.
