“Annie I Owe You A Dance” is the eighth track on the Accelerated Deluxe version of Two Lanes of Freedom. McGraw tells the tale of a man who runs into the girl he stood up at homecoming twenty years later. He expresses his regret for his actions as a teenager and his admiration for how she could forgive him despite how he had acted in the past.

Like many country songs, there is an element of nostalgia to the lyrics. Another common theme in country music is the idea that things turned out the way they did for a reason and the realization (or occasionally justification) that all parties involved wound up better off in the end, even though it wasn’t the way they wanted things to turn out.