Lee Brice doesn’t look much like a star on the cover of his debut, Love Like Crazy -- sweet enough guy, but the backwards ball cap and close-cropped beard suggest the jock next door, which is kind of what he is.

A former football player, Brice turned to music after an injury, and while he doesn’t have the macho swing usually associated with football players, he does possess a crowd-pleasing instinct that’s not without some charm.

His surroundings can be a little pedestrian, particularly when he slides into power ballads, yet he has an ability to seem like your own local boy made good, which gives these cheerfully generic tunes a modicum of personality...not one that suggests a star, but it takes a certain talent to be an everyman to everybody.