Josh Davis on the meaning of Heartbeat:
Heartbeat is a Classic County love song using steel guitar, about the perfect embrace. This is an embrace so close you can feel the other person’s heartbeat. The Chorus “Where I can feel your heartbeat, and I can feel you breathe” is meant to evoke the notion of holding a woman so close that she is protected and sheltered, if even just for a moment. The song heartbeat is about the power of touch and the power a man has to make a woman feel protected and sheltered.
The song starts out with acknowledging the need for space in a close relationship, but within limits. “Don’t you run too far away” is that warning that a balance between personal space and freedom is counter-balanced with the need to allow others to help us bear our burdens. The lines in the song go together to create a picture of a man who is strong enough in his own masculine energy to allow a woman to operate in her own feminine energy. This creates the kind of balance that truly allows both people to prosper.
A pastor told me once, that in a relationship the woman should blossom like a rose. In the end of everything we as men are guardians and warriors we protect women and children and those withing our circle. In this balance, we can be a place of shelter. Our strength as men, far from being toxic, is supposed to balance and compliment the strength of women.