Lady A’s Charles Loves To Remind Luke Bryan Of This

When Luke Bryan celebrated his 30 number one songs at a party in Nashville last week (9/12), Lady A's Dave Haywood and Hillary Scott surprised Luke by performing his first chart-topping song, 'Do I,' which was written by Byran and Lady A's Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood.

A few days after the event, we chatted with Lady A about their new upcoming single, "Love You Back." Dave joked, "Yeah, he owes us his career, right? No, I'm kidding. Charles was out of town, so Hillary and I wanted to be there for Luke Charles, and I wrote 'Do I' with him. It was just an innocent write; we tried it out at a guitar pull one night with Luke in Augusta, Georgia, and Capitol Records started to hear about it and loved it and cut it, and yeah, it was his first number one, and now he's at thirty."

Charles recalls the day the guys went over to write with Luke, and he was a bit down. Kelley told us, "I love telling this story, and I don't even know if Luke remembers this, but when we were at his house, you know he'd had really big success with 'All My Friends Say,' and then the next two (songs) were kind of a bit of a grind for him. They didn't do as well as the first, and I could tell he was just getting a little down on himself. But he had some success as a songwriter. I think he wrote 'Good Directions' for Billy Currington. He goes, 'Man, this artist thing... I just don't know. I love writing songs; I think I might just want to be a songwriter.'"

Charles adds, "It's just so funny now looking back, what really busted him open was 'Country Girl Shake It For Me,' but it all got to a certain point and maybe to feel like in some small way, you're part of his career. I don't know if I told him lately, but I love to remind him that he said that. That he might just want to be a songwriter, and now he's arguably our biggest artist over the past two decades or the past decade at least."

It's hard to believe it's been thirteen years since 2010. I was working in country music and remember it like it was yesterday. It was the year I took my then four-year-old son to his first concert: it was Taylor Swift, and he dressed in a red leather jacket. Before the show, I was invited to a party for Taylor to celebrate something (I don't remember what it was), and I gestured to my son to have his picture made with Swift. He refused to approach her, and he learned that "if you snooze, you lose." That son of mine now drives the family car.

2010 was a big year for Brad Paisley as he won his only Entertainer of the Year award from the CMA, a show he was hosting with Carrie Underwood. The CMA's Album of the Year was Miranda Lambert's Revolution, and the Song of the Year was Lambert's "The House That Built Me." Male and Female Vocalists for 2010 went to engaged (at the time) Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert. Oh, how times have changed. Shelton recently celebrated his third wedding anniversary with Gwen Stefani. Lambert has been married for four years to former New York police officer Brendan McLoughlin.

Lady A was a fairly new act (they formed in 2006) in 2010, as was the Zac Brown Band, who won the CMA's New Artist honor that year.

At the ACMs in 2010, Miranda's "The House That Built Me" won Single and Song of the Year, while Eric Church won the New Solo Vocalist of the Year. Taylor Swift won the ACM's top prize of Entertainer of the Year.

Then there were the songs in country music for the year 2010 when Taylor Swift was still a country star with her album Speak Now, and Kelly Clarkson was dabbling in country music with her duet with Jason Aldean, "Don't You Wanna Stay."

As we look at what the year 2010 was like in country music, we count down what we believe are the ten best country songs to come out of the first year of the 2010s.

This is a classic now but says so much for what the future would hold for Taylor, who wrote this song responding to critics that wrote negative things about her and her music.

This song was released on June 8, 2010, as the second single from The Band Perry's self-titled debut album. The trio of siblings enjoyed huge success in the following years, and this song seemed to start it all for them.

A great song about looking back. The lyrics are about playing high school football. Chesney says the song "perfectly describes how I grew up and where I grew up." The music video debuted on August 2, 2010, on ESPN's SportsCenter. It features many famous football players and coaches discussing their high school football experiences.

This song was Jason's first duet. He said of getting Kelly Clarkson to sing it with him, "I love her voice, and I love her style. Long story short, we got her a copy of the song, and she loved it." They performed it together on several awards shows and on American Idol.

This catchy Reba tune made history as her 25th and (as of now) final number-one song on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, tying Dolly Parton for most number-one songs by a female country artist.

This catchy number-one song is about laying back and having no worries. Some of the lyrics are: "Only worry in the world is the tide gonna reach my chair." The song features Jimmy Buffett.

Keith wrote this summer anthem with 1980s pop star Richard Marx. It's the perfect summer song. The video for the song shows Urban and his band playing in the sand in bare feet.

Turner said of this infectious number one country song when it came out, "It's an up-tempo, traditional country song that has a very catchy melody with a lyric that poses the question 'why don't we just dance?' and forget about all of the bad stuff going on the world and just concentrate on each other."

This is a once-in-a-lifetime song, and it won all the awards it possibly could from the CMA and ACM in 2010. At the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in February 2011, Miranda won the Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.

This is Lady A's career-making song, and the single has been certified 11× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. It's also the trio's only song to crack the Billboard Decade End chart, doing so at number 68. In 2011, the song won the all-genre Grammy for Song of the Year.