Scraping over 350 ‘First Dance’ playlists on Spotify and analysing the 12,000 tracks that featured on them, Diamonds Factory ranked the songs that featured the most to determine the most popular first dance song of 2024.
| | Song | Artist | Count |
1 | At Last | Etta James | 46 |
2 | Thinking Out Loud | Ed Sheeran | 44 |
2 | All of Me | John Legend | 44 |
3 | A Thousand Years | Christina Perri | 42 |
4 | Everything | Michael Bublé | 41 |
4 | Can't Help Falling in Love | Elvis Presley | 41 |
5 | Better Together | Jack Johnson | 38 |
6 | Perfect | Ed Sheeran | 36 |
6 | Can't Help Falling in Love | Haley Reinhart | 36 |
6 | Let's Stay Together | Al Green | 36 |
6 | Stand By Me | Ben E. King | 36 |
7 | Baby I'm Yours | Arctic Monkeys | 34 |
8 | Make You Feel My Love | Adele | 33 |
8 | Marry Me | Train | 33 |
9 | Say You Won't Let Go | James Arthur | 32 |
9 | Marry You | Bruno Mars | 32 |
10 | I Won't Give Up | Jason Mraz | 31 |
10 | The One | Kodaline | 31 |
11 | You Are the Best Thing | Ray LaMontagne | 30 |
12 | Beyond | Leon Bridges | 28 |
12 | You Are The Reason | Calum Scott | 28 |
12 | This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) | Natalie Cole | 28 |
13 | If I Ain't Got You | Alicia Keys | 27 |
13 | Amazed | Lonestar | 27 |
13 | Wonderful Tonight | Eric Clapton | 27 |
14 | I Get to Love You | Ruelle | 26 |
15 | Can't Take My Eyes Off You | Frankie Valli | 25 |
15 | Your Song | Elton John | 25 |
60 years on, and Etta James’ At Last is the most popular first dance song of 2024. The data revealed that it featured in a whopping 46 ‘first dance’ playlists. Regardless of the song being released over 60 years ago, Etta’s love song is still proving to be a timeless classic for couples.
Ed Sheeran is the only artist to have more than 1 song in the top 15. Thinking Out Loud has been crowned the 2nd most popular first dance song, featuring in 44 playlists. Ed is also the only artist to feature 2 of his hits in the top 25 most popular first dance songs of 2024, with Perfect being ranked the 8th most popular.
In joint 2nd place is All of Me by John Legend, which was originally released over 10 years ago in 2013 and gained the Number 2 spot in the UK charts.
Christina Perri is 3rd place, thanks to The Twilight Saga. Christina Perri’s A Thousand Years has been ranked the 3rd most popular, featuring 42 times in the data. No doubt The Twilight Saga has played a role in this song becoming a timeless choice for loved up couples.
The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll takes joint 4th place with Micheal Buble with ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ and ‘Everything’ both featuring in 41 one of the playlists.
Rounding off the top 5 most popular first dance songs for 2024 is Jack Johnson with his easy-going, uplifting beat, Better Together, featuring in 38 of the playlists.
Surprisingly, the queen of love songs, Adele, only has one song featuring in the Top 15 most popular first dance songs, with Make You Feel My Love ranked in joint 8th place.
Furthermore, Taylor Swift just misses out on the Top 15 most popular first dance songs, with her song Lover ranking in 17th place.
However, it appears that we might see her ranking higher in the coming years, as online searches in the UK for ‘Taylor Swift first dance songs’ soars 90% in the past 12 months. We wonder if we'll see her rise up the ranks more as we begin to see more Swifties get married?
