The Singles Jukebox

Fix your song first…

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Iain Mew: The initial signs are promising: some Coldplay-ish lite-pop and “You know what you’ve been missing? Meee!” sung seriously enough to pass through corny and out the other side. I can’t get over “your Walter White high” though. It’s a line that does nothing with the reference it leans on beyond spotting that it’s drug related, and it’s a microcosm of Lane’s wider inability to make the metaphor to settle on whether he’s the drug or the dealer.
[3]

Brad Shoup: Is this the first pop-country song about meth? Lane’s got no bite (neither does that tiny backing vocalist), but he’s been given a song with two choruses. Someone should really take this song apart, leave it on blocks in the front yard for three months and then put it back together in the middle of the night.
[5]

Will Adams: Most inept use of the love-as-drug trope in a song? Possibly!
[3]

Alfred Soto: A more interesting question: how did Chris Lane fix his hair to look so well? Erect seemingly of its own accord, it looks as effortless as the intro and outro guitar licks of his peripheral single sounds.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: The verse departs a little too swiftly in order to hammer onto the chorus, which is presented with all the subtlety of a steamroller. And I have to admit, those goofy “hey girl” bits are so obnoxious that I’m not all that bothered. Lane’s vocal is so mannered in a way that seems to defy the expectations of country, that I expect him to stumble into the auditions for a Maroon 5 cover band, but it doesn’t really do him any favors.
[3]

Anthony Easton: As much as I love how smooth Lane’s voice is, what I am more impressed with is how dense the production is. The lyrics are dumb, but with the way he sings them, they almost become recitative, quickly pushing the same idea across those chugging guitars. It’s insistent, and almost begging without the pathos that begging would apply. The vocal trills, the nonsense verses, playing with falsetto, doubling and backing up, and how he imbues cliché (and all the clichés) with a commitment to this kind of skill: it means the words matter less than the matching of voice with other instruments.
[7]

Madeleine Lee: I don’t listen to modern country music anymore, so every time I dip back into the stream I’m surprised by how readily it’s been incorporating other popular musical styles. In this case, “Fix” adds pleading “baby, baby, baby” R&B melodies and ad-libs to a guitar-picking chorus that thoroughly shakes down its metaphor. The lyrics are a little too thuddingly obvious for me (and “that good ish” is the most punishing consequence of this genre fusion), but the music is cool enough to compensate.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: A little twangy, a little rocky, a huge production (reminiscent of Mutt Lange’s ’90s work with Shania Twain), and a vocal that tells you Lane is going for it, this makes me think of what Nashville‘s Gunnar Scott might sound like if he decided to pursue hit country. And it’s pretty awesome.
[7]

Cassy Gress: Chris Lane is “bro-country,” apparently, but aside from his drawl, which shows up maybe 25% of the time, this barely sounds country at all — I’d buy it as a Rob Thomas or maybe even Adam Levine song. Song structure, melody, voice, all good, but man I hate that opening line: “Hey girl, you know what you’ve been missing? Me, me, yeah.” Guys who say that are never what a girl has been missing. I’ll just be standing over here, scrunching up my nose, arms crossed, giving this a 
[7]