There’s an enormous amount of pressure for couples choosing the right song to soundtrack their wedding’s first dance. It’s not just that it’s three minutes (or more) where all your friends and family are staring at you. It’s also about what that song says about you and your relationship. What about when you’re a musician getting married? Choose wrong and, well, it’s not just your career in question. A range of musicians across different genres have bravely put their reputations on the line for you to judge – and not all of them stand by their choices …
Charlie Simpson, Busted
Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós
My wife and my first dance song was Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós, which was a really weird choice. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s an unbelievable song and it means something special to us, but if we could go back and do it again, we would probably pick a different one. I don’t think my wife will be angry at me for saying that.
We went through quite a few different options, but we just wanted something that was really moving and a song that we could enjoy in the moment. What we didn’t think through was what everyone else would do while we danced. Usually people come in and join the proceedings, but that vibe never really materialised because the song is so slow and it’s not that well known.
To be honest though, when I was dancing with my wife, it didn’t really matter what song was playing. At that moment, everyone and everything just disappeared except me and her and I was able to take in the gravity of what it meant to commit my life to another person.
Tickets for Busted v McFly’s 2025 tour are on sale now.
Kate Pierson, the B-52s
Crush Me With Your Love by Sia
My wife and I have been together for almost 20 years, but we got married in 2015 after it became legal in the United States, and it was really beautiful. But we couldn’t get it together to actually organise the wedding. We thought: “Shouldn’t we just get married in Hawaii?” Sure enough, the B-52s had a gig in Hawaii, so we got married there. Our friend Sia was there and she sang Crush Me With Your Love, which is a song she wrote for me for my first solo album.
I’m also a wedding officiant and I’ve done about five weddings. Every one that I’ve officiated, they want to play Love Shack or have me sing Love Shack. It’s definitely a must-play at weddings. But if I had to choose another first dance song that wasn’t by the B-52s, I would say The Best Is Yet to Come by Frank Sinatra and Count Basie.
Kate Pierson’s Radios & Rainbows is out now.
Chesney Hawkes, 90s soft rocker
Unforgettable by Nat King Cole
When we got married on the Fourth of July in 1997 we chose Unforgettable by Nat King Cole as our first dance song.
The lyrics to that song are so beautifully romantic for me, and in a classic way, say all that a perfect wedding song should say. It’s incredible that someone so unforgettable thinks I am unforgettable, too.
It’s quite funny, though – when I was asked to do this, my wife sent me a text telling me she couldn’t remember what the song was! I laughed to myself because it’s supposed to be unforgettable! So it was a beautiful moment remembered by me, forgotten by my wife.
Chesney Hawkes’ new single, Get a Hold of Yourself, is out now.
Jax Jones, chart-topping house DJ
I Got U by Duke Dumont ft Jax Jones
We chose one of my songs, I Got U, which I did with Duke Dumont and which samples Whitey Houston’s My Love Is Your Love, because it’s a song that meant a lot to myself and my wife. It was inspired by the beginning of our relationship when we got together and it reflected that early honeymoon period. I was 24, I’d been dropped by my record label and was just starting out again, dabbling in house music. I Got U was one of the first tracks I made and I remember how much she loved it when I first played it to her. I’ve always loved the Whitney original, so I just repurposed it to impress my wife.
I tried to get Mariah Carey to come to my wedding. My wife wanted to see who we could get to come and sing. She was like: “Why can’t we utilise your fame to sort this out?” We started at Mariah Carey and had to work our way down when we found out she costs $1m.
In the end, we got Ella Henderson to record a version of the Jackson 5 song I’ll Be There for the wedding, which I blended it into I Got U, so it became a mashup. All of our friends were aware of how much that song means and what it represents for us.
Tickets for Jax Jones’s It’s the Pop Up Tour But Bigger Tour in the UK are on sale now.
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The Blessed Madonna, DJ-producer
Devotion by Ten City
Well it wasn’t the most traditional of weddings to begin with. Our friends threw it for us at someone’s house, which was a condo that was created for the purpose of shooting pornography. But my friends lived there and one of the upsides was that it had a dancefloor and a bar. We didn’t have a first dance. It just didn’t happen and I think that’s fair because my husband and I have had thousands of other dances. Our entire relationship has played out on dancefloors. But what I can say was the closest we had to a first dance on that day was Devotion by Ten City. I have lots of wonderful memories of playing that record in a very specific way for me.
The most important dance of that night was one with my mother-in-law, who is Ukrainian. We found the one single common ground musically, sonically and culturally, which was Abba. They say there are no universals in life, but surely one has to be Abba.
The Blessed Madonna’s debut album, Godspeed, is out now.
Oh Wonder, married alt-pop duo
All My Friends by LCD Soundsystem
We judge weddings on the last song of the night because that’s like the bow on a present and the final chance for everyone to give it their all. So we actually focused our energy on the last song of our wedding, which was All My Friends by LCD Soundsystem. It’s a nearly eight-minute song that just builds and builds, and you really have to lock into it because it’s very repetitive. So by the end of the song it was all our mates and immediate family with our arms around each other in a huge circle just jumping. That was the highlight of the wedding for us.
Shark: 10 Years On is out now.
Melissa Bonny, Ad Infinitum vocalist
Hold My Hand by Lady Gaga
We picked Hold My Hand by Lady Gaga from Top Gun: Maverick. We watched the movie together when it came out and we instantly fell in love with the song. When we were thinking about our first dance, I knew that we both loved this song, so when I suggested it to my husband he said: “Let’s go for it.”
What was interesting was at the wedding right after we had our first dance, my husband and I were performing together with two guys from my band. I found the dance part to be the scariest because you’re in the middle of everybody with all eyes on you. Then once Hold My Hand finished, we went straight to our instruments and started playing Paramore’s Still Into You.
Tickets for Kamelot: Awaken the World Tour are now on sale.
Paul Russell, TikTok-powered rapper and singer
Georgia on My Mind by Ray Charles
We had our wedding planned for 2020, but then Covid happened. So we got married on Zoom, and then we had a real wedding in 2021 where we had our first dance to Ray Charles’s Georgia on My Mind. From pretty early on, we had decided that was going to be the one. It’s always been a song that my wife loves, and I’m from Georgia originally. We always thought it was kind of a funny thing that she loved the song, but she’s not from Georgia at all.
When I proposed, I made sure Georgia on My Mind was playing. So the song has connections from different moments in our relationship and it has that quality where it feels very sincere. It just felt like the right choice.
Paul Russell’s debut EP Again Sometime? is out now.
Tigran Hamasyan, Armenian jazz pianist
Tamzara, traditional Armenian folk dance
I got married nine years ago and it was a traditional Armenian wedding. This meant the first dance was the Tamzara and it’s actually instrumental, so there’s no singing. It’s also not just my wife and I alone on the dancefloor. We did the Tamzara as a circle dance which meant we were in the centre and surrounded by our friends and family. This dance in Armenia is really about the community and the energy I felt that day was something I’ve never experienced before.
Tigran Hamasyan is performing at Cadogan Hall, London on 17 November.
Tamar-kali, alt-rocker and OutKast collaborator
Just the Two of Us by Bill Withers and Grover Washington Jr
We love music and my partner is a very serious jazz head and our wedding was also around the time that there was that documentary, Still Bill, about Bill Withers that had just come out. So the song my husband and I chose was Just the Two of Us by Bill Withers and Grover Washington Jr.
Usually our favourite Bill songs to listen to are Grandma’s Hands or Use Me. But for some reason we were listening to Just the Two of Us and maybe because it was a popular 80s hit, people underestimate the lyrical content of that song. They say some very profound things about love and we used some of it for our vows. There’s a line that says “we look for love, no time for tears / Wasted water’s all that is, it and it don’t make no flowers grow”, and that beautiful metaphor and language really spoke to us.
Tamar-kali’s latest opera work, SWANN, is out now.
