Lee Brice Calls ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now’ Celebration ‘One of My Favorite Number-One Parties’ (Exclusive)

Lee Brice and Carly Pearce‘s duet, “I Hope You’re Happy Now” went No. 1 in June, and while the song’s artists and writers weren’t able to celebrate with a traditional party, they did get together for a more low-key celebration. The song was written by Pearce, Luke Combs, Randy Montana and Jonathan Singleton, and Brice told PopCulture.com exclusively that they were able to have a small celebration at Combs’ barn with about seven people

“We kinda just went out and said, ‘All right, maybe we can’t go out and have a huge 500 person squeezed into a place, a normal number one party, but we can us five go out there and hang out,’” Brice said. “It might have been one of my favorite number-one parties ever because it was just relaxed and we got to just talk to each other. It was nice.” Brice shared that it feels “unbelievable” to top the charts with “I Hope You’re Happy Now,” explaining that he feels “really humbled and just thankful to be a part of that song.” “It’s kinda her story, her song,” he said of Pearce. “She wrote it with Luke Combs, he could have sang on it, and there’s a couple of other artists, actually. And so to be a part of it, I feel pretty fortunate.”

While the 41-year-old admitted that “it sucks that I got a number-one song on the radio and can’t go play it out for anybody,” Brice and his family have been staying busy during quarantine, taking advantage of their land and are making sure to spend plenty of time outside. “We’ve got our house, and then I’ve had this little, this farm is about 15 minutes away from my house, and so we’ve just been like zipping back and forth,” he said. “And I just bring the kids out here.”

Brice and his wife, Sara, share sons Takoda and Ryker and daughter Trulee, and Brice’s touring schedule meant that he wasn’t always able to spend as much time with his family as he might like. “Honestly, I used to come home for like 24 hours,” he said. “And try to squeeze in my time with the kids and squeeze in teaching them stuff, and da da da da da. But now, I haven’t had to squeeze it in, I’ve been able to go, ‘Hey, let’s take a few days and learn how to drive daddy’s stick shift, like this ’79 CJ7.’ Or, ‘Let’s learn how to run a tiller.’ Or, ‘Let’s hook up a trailer.’ Or, ‘Let’s do little things.’ And so, that has really, I’ve truly gotten some amazing stuff out of. This might go down as like one of the best summers for me, with my children at least.”

“I think about so many people that it’s just a different situation and very difficult,” he continued. “But we’ve definitely taken advantage of our time at home.”