The first dance is one of the most memorable parts of any wedding, as the happy couple take to the dancefloor for the very first time as newlyweds. Of course, this means that choosing the first dance song is incredibly important, with some tracks making better options than others.
Whether you choose a slow jam to romantically sway to or an upbeat classic to boogie to, there is a perfect song for every couple’s first dance. In fact, some songs have proven perfect for plenty of newlyweds, but which songs are the most popular?
We’ve taken a look at user-created playlists on Spotify to find out which songs are the most popular choices for the first dance. Maybe you’ll find your song in our results.
The top first dance songs
Want to make a playlist of the top first dance songs? Why not start with our top tracks?
- A Thousand Years – Christina Perri
- Amazed – Lonestar
- All of Me – John Legend
- Marry Me – Train
- At Last – Etta James
- Make You Feel My Love – Adele
- Perfect – Ed Sheeran
- Can’t Help Falling in Love – Elvis Presley
- Thinking Out Loud – Ed Sheeran
- You Are the Best Thing – Ray LaMontagne
Christina Perri’s hit, A Thousand Years, takes the top spot, a rather fitting choice as this song featured on the soundtrack for the Twilight franchise in the film Breaking Dawn Part 1, which saw the (spoiler alert!) wedding of Edward and Bella. At the time of our research, the track had 655,217,828 plays and featured on 46 of the 133 playlists.
It’s closely followed by the 90s classic, Amazed by Lonestar, which appeared on 44 playlists and had 82,400,189 plays on Spotify.
The top first dance artists
While these are the top songs, the top artists tell quite a different story. Ed Sheeran takes the top spot, appearing 133 times across these playlists, with tracks including Perfect, Thinking Out Loud and Tenerife Sea.
Jason Mraz follows Ed Sheeran, appearing 79 times across the playlists with songs such as I Won’t Give Up, Lucky and I’m Yours.
Methodology
We collated a list of 7,597 songs by using playlists created by users and by Spotify that had a reference to ‘first dance’ in their titles. This gave us a total of 133 playlists from which we got our list of songs.
By taking the songs from each of these playlists, we were able to find which songs and artists featured in the largest number of playlists, allowing us to discover which song is the most popular for the first dance.