On June 25, 2026, two days before the sold-out farewell concert that closed out his touring career, Alan Jackson put out a new single. He didn’t write it, and it wasn’t country to begin with. It was “Still the One,” the 1976 pop hit by Orleans, and he recorded it for one listener: his wife, Denise.
He cut it that spring as a birthday present for Denise. It had been 50 years since the summer they started dating in their hometown of Newnan, Georgia, and this song was playing in one of his earliest memories of her.
A Cheerleader, a Friend’s House, the Summer of 1976
In 1976, Denise was 16 and a cheerleader at Newnan High School. Alan was 17. One day at a friend’s house, he watched her rehearse a dance routine for the squad, and the song she was practicing to was “Still the One,” a hit on the radio that summer.
When he announced the release on social media, Alan Jackson told it in his own plain way:
“I sat there and watched her, and three years later, I ended up marrying that young girl. She’s my wife today, Denise.”
He added that the song had always been “one of our old fond memories of our starting out days,” and that any time they heard it, the memories came back.
The marriage he mentioned came on December 15, 1979. At the end of 2026, Alan and Denise Jackson will mark 47 years as husband and wife.
Before the Song, a Penny at the Dairy Queen
The cheerleading memory isn’t the only story of how the romance began, and the accounts don’t line up perfectly. The social media post announcing the single described the rehearsal as the moment Alan met Denise. His own official timeline puts their first meeting at the Dairy Queen in Newnan, also in 1976.
Denise has told that Dairy Queen story herself. In a 2011 interview with GAC’s Backstory, as Taste of Country reported it, she recalled that Alan introduced himself by tossing a penny down her shirt and asking if he could go get it. When that didn’t work, he hid in the back seat of her car while it sat in the Dairy Queen lot and jumped out to scare her when she got in.
Whichever came first, both stories belong to the same year in the same small Georgia town, and the song belongs to those first months together.
A Song About Staying Together
Orleans took “Still the One” to No. 5 in 1976. The music was written by the band’s John Hall, and the lyrics by Johanna Hall, his wife and writing partner at the time. According to Orleans bassist Lance Hoppen, as told to Songfacts, the idea started when a friend of Johanna’s asked why nobody wrote songs about staying together instead of breaking up.
John and Johanna Hall later divorced. The song about lasting love outlasted their marriage. Fifty years on, it found its way to a couple whose marriage did last.
“A Little Country Seasoning”
Alan Jackson said he went into the studio and recorded “that little pop song” with “a little country seasoning on it.” The single was released through MCA.
He talks his way through the recording. The track opens with a spoken nod to 1976. Partway through, he calls out the steel guitar and the fiddle as if the band were playing in the room. Near the end, he tells her she’s still got it and calls her “sugar.”
As for why he chose it, Alan Jackson put it simply. He gave it to her for her birthday because she’s still the one.
Two Days Later, Nissan Stadium
The timing gave the song a second meaning for fans. Alan Jackson, who disclosed in 2021 that he has Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a degenerative nerve condition that affects his balance, played his final full-length concert at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium on June 27, 2026.
So the new song he handed fans right before that night wasn’t about the road or the end of a career. It was about a Newnan High cheerleader, a song on the radio, and a 17-year-old boy who sat in a friend’s house and watched her dance.