Alternately, will we ever get over “Need You Now”? Probably not, but that’s fine…

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Alfred Soto: It’s possible Lady A will write a memorable single after stumbling over the great “Need You Now” a decade (!) ago. They have the equipment: boring singers who generate a frisson when harmonizing. Yet the chorus is so generic that I expect a producer’s interpolating ACME like Mike Will Made It does his name.
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Edward Okulicz: Much like my recipe for chicken soup never changes, the recipe for Lady Antebellum’s heartache country-pop remains the same. The ingredients are as shopworn as they are lovelorn, but the way they harmonise always warms me up. Comparing it to “Need You Now” illustrates why that’s a 10 and this is a 6, though — that song had a huge emotional wallop when the drums and guitars came in at the chorus, whereas here the drums are insistent, slightly stultifying. The ingredients here always combine in a way that’s good, but no more than that.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: The drums keep pounding as if to telegraph the ceaseless worrying brought on by a breakup. Paired with a line like “what if time doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do,” the humdrum nature of the song almost seems charming.
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Ian Mathers: There’s a little bit of Tom Petty to the verses; I wish there was a bit more to the chorus. Not bad, though.
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Katherine St Asaph: Like “Need You Now” and “Teardrops on My Guitar,” this achieves a kind of stately, pristine, prefab sentiment: the McMansion of heartbreak.
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Thomas Inskeep: Chilled, almost elegant production serves this breakup song well, as do Lady A’s always crystalline vocals (both solo and harmony). The bridge lyric “What if I never get closure?” especially stings. Their best single in years.
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Taylor Alatorre: The bridge, overwrought though it may be, is what transforms this from a generic emotional comfort blanket into something slightly more memorable. Not content with romanticizing the song’s premise, they instead take it to its logical and terrifying conclusion — this is an irreversible loss that will permanently alter who I am and affect all of my relationships going forward. Whether this catastrophizing is true or not is beside the point, because they sing it in the same way one has a panicked realization right before falling asleep, which is exactly what the moment calls for. The sense of fatalism may be more overt here than it was on “Need You Now,” but that doesn’t make it any less welcome.
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Alex Clifton: In 2010, when “Need You Now” came out, I worked at my university’s bookshop. The managers would exclusively play Top 40 hits and modern country radio, which meant that Lady Antebellum were suddenly inescapable. I vowed to hate them forever because “Need You Now” felt overly dramatic and stupid and played during literally every shift, but time seems to have mellowed my opinion of Lady Antebellum. “What If I Never Get Over You” is also dramatic, but here it feels earnt: it’s certainly a terrifying thought about a feeling that could, indeed, last forever. I’ve been there. I wish they had leaned in a little harder into the fear of never letting go and gone a bit further. It’s pleasant as is, but maybe could’ve gone a little more high-stakes. As it stands, though, I guess I no longer hate Lady Antebellum, and that within itself is a minor miracle.
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