Nick Cain’s “Stuck On You” takes a Motown classic and drags it to a barstool. What Lionel Richie delivered as soft soul and velvet reassurance, a confession whispered into a hotel phone, Cain opens to a dozen voices by the second line, warm nostalgia and barroom energy arriving as the same thing, a memory you drink to instead of crying about. The vocal sounds lived-in, not polished. Cain does not try to match Richie’s glide. Tiredness is what makes you believe him, not sincerity.
By the final chorus, the song has stopped being Lionel Richie’s. It belongs to the bar, the band, the last call crowd that stays for one more round they do not need. Easy is the wrong word for what Cain builds here. Connection that arrives in a room full of strangers is never easy. It just feels that way after three beers. “Stuck On You” ends like a door closing behind someone who might come back. The cover does not answer whether they will. It only plays the jukebox again.
