Wedding dance songs rated for their popularity, and resulting happiness or divorce

Which wedding songs mean the difference between “happy ever after” and D.I.V.O.R.C.E.? Find out the first dance hits and last chance misses in a new worldwide survey.

Elton John and Renata Blauel on their wedding day in Sydney in 1984. Their union didn’t last – but maybe that’s cause because Elton hadn’t written Can You Feel The Love Tonight at that time. He later remarried David Furnish. Picture: Getty Images

If you want to live happily ever after, then you can’t go past a Disney song for the first dance at your wedding – but choosing One Direction would be a misdirection.

Online marketplace OnBuy.com surveyed 5544 people worldwide, asking them for their first dance song and their current marital status.

Elton John’s Lion King film theme Can You Feel the Love Tonight? had the most magic formula, with 77 per cent of those who danced to it at their weddings saying they were still happily married.

Our Favourite First Dance Songs - survey by OnBuy.com

The song was also the third most popular wedding dance choice overall (9.24 per cent of those surveyed), after Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love (10.48) and another tune from Sir Elton, Your Song (9.83).

Two other Disney songs also registered over 70 per cent on the happy scale, A Whole New World from Aladdin and You’ll Be in My Heart from Tarzan.

Second on the “happiness” scale was Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely (75), closely followed by Frank Sinatra’s The Way You Look Tonight (74).

One Direction band members Liam Payne, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles in 2012, before they broke up, along with many people who picked their song at their wedding. Picture: AP / Charles Sykes

However, the most unsuccessful song – with a whopping 75 per cent of people who danced to it now separated or divorced – was Little Things by boy band One Direction which, unsurprisingly, also broke up after just a few years.

Second in the divorce stakes was I’m Yours by Jason Mraz, with 61 per cent of people declaring they’re not anymore, followed in third spot by Chasing Cars from Snow Patrol (56 per cent).

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 49,000 Aussies got divorced in 2018.

Our Favourite First Dance Songs survey was conducted for https://www.onbuy.com