The CMA performance of “Think I’m In Love With You” is one of those duets that rewards a close listen, because it puts two very different voices side by side and lets you hear exactly how vocal choices shape the colour of a sound.
Watching Chris Stapleton and Dua Lipa trade lines on this song is a genuine lesson in timbre, register and the small technical decisions that make a voice sound the way it does.
In this breakdown we walk through the key singing techniques at work throughout the performance so you can understand what is actually happening in each voice and start applying those same tools to your own singing.
Two Contrasting Timbres in One Voice
One of the first things that stands out in “Think I’m In Love With You” is how Dua Lipa moves between two completely different vocal colours.
Lower in her range she carries a notably dark timbre, the kind you tend to hear from a mezzo or alto voice, and you can pick up on that darkness even in her speaking voice. This is worth understanding because timbre is not a fixed quality you are stuck with.
It is shaped by how you balance vocal fold thickness, larynx height and the space inside your throat and mouth.
When Dua Lipa colours the sound darker, the whole character of the note changes, and that contrast against Chris Stapleton’s brighter country tone is a big part of what makes the duet work.
How a Dark Timbre Makes High Notes Feel Lower
Here is something that trips up a lot of singers. When you hear a darker voice sing a note, your ear often tells you it is higher than it really is.
Across this performance Dua Lipa sits on pitches like F sharp 4 and A flat 4, and they sound impressively high, yet when you go to sing them yourself you discover they are relatively low and very achievable.
Most of “Think I’m In Love With You” actually sits low for the female chest voice register, which is exactly why it feels comfortable for a darker voice.
The chest voice loves to live in roughly the octave from the A below middle C up to the A above middle C, and much of this song sits right in that lower zone.
A few pitch reference points from the performance to anchor your ear:
- Middle C is C4, the centre point most of this register sits around
- F sharp 4 and A flat 4 are the notes that sound high but feel low in a darker voice
- B3 up to C sharp 4 shows up in the lower phrases, comfortably under middle C
Twang as a Tool for Volume
Twang is one of the most useful concepts to understand from “Think I’m In Love With You,” and it appears constantly in Chris Stapleton’s country delivery.
In simple terms, twang is a tightening of the area just above the larynx, and it gives you a brighter, more carrying sound without forcing more air or pushing for volume. It is a favourite tool in country and jazz singing precisely because it changes the colour of a note and adds projection in a way that feels efficient rather than effortful.
Throughout the duet you can hear Chris Stapleton leaning into far more twang than Dua Lipa does, which is part of why his lines cut through with that bright country character while hers stay darker and rounder.
What makes “Think I’m In Love With You” such a good study is that you can hear twang being added and pulled back in real time. When Dua Lipa wants more volume in a phrase she adds a touch of twang and the line lifts in brightness and projection.
When she drops back into the verse she pulls the twang out and the sound darkens again. This is the real skill: using twang as a dial you can turn up or down rather than an on or off switch, so the voice sounds consistent even as you change its colour from one moment to the next.
The Nasality Question
On certain lines in “Think I’m In Love With You” the sound takes on what can feel like a nasal quality, and this is one of the most common questions singers ask about Dua Lipa’s tone.
It is worth knowing that an apparently nasal sound is not always genuine nasality. It can come from the soft palate, which is the doorway to the nose, lowering slightly, but it can equally come from a tightening at the back of the throat that only mimics a nasal colour.
Without physically checking it is genuinely difficult to tell which is happening, and that is the honest mystery of vocal technique.
If you feel like you are sounding nasal and it is getting in the way of your notes, this is the kind of thing best diagnosed one to one, because the fix depends entirely on which of the two causes is actually at play.
Reaching Higher Notes Without Squeezing
As the voices climb toward notes like A4, it can look like Dua Lipa is squeezing to get there, but that is not really what is happening.
Moving higher in the range involves a gentle engagement of the constrictor muscles, the swallowing muscles inside the pharynx at the back of the throat, combined with a small amount of tongue compression and that familiar twang.
The crucial distinction is that this is not the same as closing up the throat entirely. A lot of singers who try to copy Dua Lipa’s sound make the mistake of clamping down and shutting off the resonance, when the goal is a controlled, partial engagement that keeps the throat open enough for the tone to ring.
Why the Tongue Matters So Much
Tongue position does a surprising amount of work across “Think I’m In Love With You.” On the brighter, more call-like moments you can see a deliberate change in where the tongue sits, and that shift is a big driver of the sound.
This matters because the tongue actually inserts into the larynx itself, so a tongue that is strong and mobile gives you real control over your tone. Strengthening it is not about tongue twisters, it comes through targeted vocal exercises that build the muscle over time.
Lower in the chest voice you can also hear how closing the mouth slightly helps create the gentle tightness that twang relies on, which is another small tongue and jaw adjustment doing meaningful work.
Matching Vowels in a Duet
Because “Think I’m In Love With You” is a duet, it also teaches one of the most underrated skills in ensemble singing: vowel matching. When two singers land on the same note but shape the vowel differently, the result can sound out of tune even when both pitches are technically correct.
You can hear Chris Stapleton and Dua Lipa working to match their vowels so the blend stays clean, and the riff they trade is a great example of the kind of phrase you could turn into an aural training exercise.
If you ever sing with other people, training your ear to match vowel shapes is one of the fastest ways to make your harmonies lock in.
A short checklist for cleaner duet singing drawn from this performance:
- Match the vowel shape, not just the pitch, when you share a note
- Listen for the other voice’s timbre and decide how much twang to blend in
- Keep your colour consistent within a phrase so the harmony does not drift
Singing the Song in a Different Key
One practical note if you want to take on “Think I’m In Love With You” as a solo singer. The duet sits very low because Chris Stapleton is carrying the lower lead, so if a female singer wants to sing the whole thing alone it is well worth raising the pitch by at least three half steps.
In its original key much of the song lands in the very bottom of the female chest voice register, where it can sound heavy and lose its sparkle. Lifting it a few semitones brings it back into a register that feels healthier and lets the voice bloom rather than sitting underneath itself.
Final Thoughts
What makes “Think I’m In Love With You” such a rich study is that Chris Stapleton and Dua Lipa sing many of the same pitches yet sound worlds apart, and almost all of that difference comes down to timbre and twang.
Stapleton’s brighter country colour and Dua Lipa’s darker, rounder tone are two ends of a dial that every singer has access to once they understand the mechanics.
Resonance and volume do not come from tightening harder, they come from better vocal fold closure and from letting the sound ring, and that is the real takeaway from this performance.
Anyone can learn to do this, because at heart it is all about training a set of muscles to move the way you want them to.
If you want to learn more about how you can learn to implement these singing techniques into your own voice, let’s sit down for a chat and discuss if the vocal academy is the right fit for you. You can join us here.