"I Loved Her First" is the title of a song written by Walt Aldridge

Walt Aldridge

Walt Aldridge is an American musician, singer, songwriter, engineer and record producer.Aldridge is known primarily as a Nashville songwriter...

 and Elliott Park, and recorded by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 country music

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 group Heartland

Heartland (band)

Heartland is an American country music band from Huntsville, Alabama. It is composed of Jason Albert , Craig Anderson , Todd Anderson , Chuck Crawford , Mike Myerson , and Keith West...

. It was released in June 2006 as the band's debut single, it reached Number One on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.This 60-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly mostly by airplay and occasionally commercial sales...

 charts in late 2006.

Content

The song is a mid-tempo ballad in triple meter. In it, the male narrator is talking to the man who is about to marry his daughter, telling him that he is having difficulty giving her away because he "loved her first."

Critical reception

Deborah Evans Price, of Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

magazine reviewed the song favorably, calling it a "beautifully written tearjerker that will hit home with dads everywhere who can't believe their little girls have grown up so soon." She calls Albert's performance "wonderful" and says that it "wrings every drop of emotion from the tender lyric."

Music video

The music video was directed by Todd Schaffer and premiered in mid-2006. It features the group singing and a family at a wedding reception.

Chart performance

"I Loved Her First" debuted at number 57 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks for the week of July 8, 2006. > >

Chart (2006)	Peak position
US Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Pop 100 Pop 100 The Pop 100 was a songs chart that debuted in February 2005 and was released weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States until its discontinuation in 2009...	56