We really love this song! Wait…
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[4.57]
Al Varela: Pretty easy to compare this to the last time a teenager went viral over a breakup song, but I’ll be fair to Lauren and judge the song on its own merits. In which case… It’s fine? I think I like what the song is trying to do more than the song itself. It’s an angry lashing out against a guy who gave her plenty of good memories but also buried her in baggage she wasn’t remotely prepared to tackle. The anger in Lauren’s voice is certainly justified, and pinpointing his daddy issues is certainly a telling line that brings in some good subtext, but the song doesn’t go far enough. It stays too long in the good memories without properly examining how those memories were tainted by hindsight, so the catharsis isn’t really there in the same way it is in Olivia Rodrigo’s material. Plus, the cheap production really lets this song down. It never reaches a proper climax, instead content to wallow in the same dynamic and never getting as intense as Lauren’s otherwise good performance. There’s absolutely potential within this song, but I think it needed more time to be fleshed out instead of rushed to streaming so it could get that sweet sweet virality while the iron’s hot.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Influence hits harder and faster in the social media age. Barely a year after “Driver’s License” Olivia Rodrigo smiles benignly on Lauren Spencer-Smith’s sweetly electronic “Fingers Crossed,” a pained valentine to a boy with daddy issues. In Rodrigo’s songs I hear the attempts to avoid overstatement: the bigger the emotions, the tighter the songs. By contrast “Fingers Crossed” sounds a few thousand bucks away from an awards show ballad.
[5]
Andy Hutchins: Cross “the unholy spawn of Miley Cyrus and Lewis Capaldi” off the list of things the music industry will try and fail to splice Olivia Rodrigo and/or Billie Eilish with. Would that we could ash the list entirely.
[2]
Nortey Dowuona: When I first heard this, I thought it would be a fantastic break up/put down kill shot by Lauren…. and the ticking guitar and plush synths and lumbering thin drums and the fingers crossed punch line proved me right. The problem though, is that once the punchline is laid across the unlucky bastards eyes, he’s been blinded, and all the high pitched wails laid over Lauren’s static, plasticky voice don’t make it cut through the skull any further. So it’s actually a relief it ends anti-climatically and doesn’t even bother with a bridge and final chorus; it should have been an interlude at best.
[5]
Oliver Maier: A dead ringer for Rodrigo lyrically, most notably in the “fix you/issues/miss you” combo and the way that “when you said you loved me, well you must have had your fingers crossed” is structurally doing the same thing as “you said forever, now I drive alone past your street.” Still, there’s just enough extra depth in the arrangement for “Fingers Crossed” to feel 3-dimensional.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: It’s almost impossible to hear this without imagining a focus group behind it recommending this inflection or that snatch of melody or that turn of phrase because it tested well in the market. Spencer-Smith makes her moves well enough that perhaps it doesn’t matter that none of them are her own. I like how she bites down on words like “daddy issues,” but there’s a curious lack of actual personality to most of her delivery.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: There’s a slight ABBA lilt to the second half of the chorus, but that doesn’t make up for the Colbie Caillat-Katy Perry chimera of everything else.
[2]