The country underground is abuzz with praise for the new single “Slow Down” by Melissa Quinn Fox, and it doesn’t take much more than a cursory sit-down with the song to understand why it’s getting as much love from the country crowd as it is those who follow casual pop music. While I’ve always been partial to a good Nashville beat, this is a performance that derives so much out of its harmonic tension that there’s scarcely a moment in which we can appreciate the lyrics all on their own.
URL: https://melissaquinnfox.com/
With Fox leading the charge, we navigate deep trenches of emotion that leave us questioning how much of this track is meant to be reflective and how much of it is meant to be commentarial. This is a singer who has a lot more to say than some of her peers both in and outside of the country music establishment, and in “Slow Down” she’s putting everything on the line – seemingly for no other reason than to confess everything to her audience. It’s a bold move, and one I wouldn’t expect from someone still finding their voice as a player.
The vibrancy of the strings is something that attracted me to the intro in this song right off the bat, but their glowing tone isn’t the only charming element of the mix as a whole. On the contrary, there’s something very special to be said about the way Fox’s voice anchors everything together in the chorus, almost as though she’s one of the instruments integrated with her backing band rather than the lead singer controlling everything from behind the microphone.
Indeed, she has a presence that doesn’t go away even long after you’ve stopped listening to this single, and relative to what I’ve heard in some of her other work, I think this stays true to the identity she’s been forging in the studio for a while now. She’s more of a working-class musician than a lot of listeners might be inclined to believe just judging from the cosmetic scheme in place in this track, and she doesn’t mind grinding a bit of powerful melodicism into the fever pitch just to show us how much she cares about the little details here.
If you’re into the country music beat as much as I am, I think you’re going to be very excited about what Melissa Quinn Fox has been up to lately, and I don’t even think this is going to be the last of her success in 2023. There’s already a vacant spot in the hierarchy of quality country music in Nashville that is waiting for her, and with the caliber of the content we’re seeing out of her camp at the moment, there’s no reason to believe that she isn’t going to keep the momentum rolling as the spring starts to peak through these last few winter clouds. All in all, this is a player I want to hear more of, and someone that country music needs to appreciate for all she is worth.
Garth Thomas