'Lights Down Low' singer MAX explains the real-life love story behind his hit song

“Lights Down Low” might be one of the most popular love songs of 2018. But for the man behind the lyrics, MAX, it’s a personal love story dedicated to his wife, Emily Schneider.

After meeting through mutual friends a few years back, the singer-songwriter and British nanny knew that they were interested in one another. However, it wasn’t until MAX was on tour during the summer of 2015 that either of them acted on their secret crush.

“I was on tour with Fall Out Boy, and my friend who introduced us was like, ‘Oh, can my friend Emily come to your show?'” MAX tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, the super-hot British girl? For sure, she could definitely come.'”

Emily was living in Chicago at the time, where MAX would be for the next week. He used the opportunity to ask her out — although it didn’t initially go as planned.

“I sent her a message on Facebook, of all things,” he says, “and I asked her if she wanted to hang out.”

Emily responded with the suggestion that they go out with all of their friends, to which MAX immediately replied, “I was more thinking just like you and me could do something.” And the date sparked an instant connection.

Throughout the rest of the tour, Emily made trips to visit MAX at multiple tour destinations, making their relationship semi-long-distance. To capture the essence of the moments they had together, and the urge they both had to stay together for longer periods of time, MAX wrote his most notable song.

“I wrote ‘Lights Down Low’ right after I started dating Emily. And I knew I was just gonna write a song that I wanted for her. I just wanted to dedicate something to her,” MAX says of the song that has now become a universal expression of love. “I just knew she was it, and I knew I was gonna marry her. It was wild. I just literally knew.”

Five months after the couple started dating, their future came up in a very real conversation. “We both got so nervous,” Emily says of the moment she suggested they get married. “And then [MAX] fully proposed three months after that.”

The proposal took place at the same restaurant in Chicago where MAX and Emily shared their first date just nine months before. MAX sang the song that he had created just for his wife-to-be alongside a harpist. The romantic evening was one of many that Emily says makes up their wonderful life together.

“Max is definitely the biggest romantic,” she says. “Our lives are on this grand scale. We’re always going to crazy places and doing crazy shows and things that I certainly never dreamed of for myself. And we just have the most amazing time together wherever we are.”

Check out MAX’s latest song, “Worship,” which comes out on Wednesday.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• ‘If you like him so much, why don’t you date him?’: How former Cheetah Girl Adrienne Houghton finally got together with her husband, Israel
• How ‘Bachelor in Paradise’ alums Ashley Iaconetti and Jared Haibon went from friends to fiancés
• Pop duo Matt and Kim kept their relationship secret for years. When they finally told the world, something amazing happened.

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