"Criminal" is a song recorded by Canadian country music singer Lindsay Ell for her third studio album, The Project (2017).

[1][4] Ell elaborated to Radio.com that she wrote the song about being grateful for the way some people, "will walk into your life, and you don't really know where they came from or how they came at the time they did," and that the criminal allegory is a "really happy" one.

[10] Billy Dukes of Taste of Country complimented the song's "made-for-radio" production and wrote that Ell's vocals on the track were "nothing short of convincing.

"[1] Kelly Brickey of Sounds Like Nashville wrote that Ell "gets away with murder in the sweetest way," on "Criminal" and praised the way she "put[s] her heart and soul on the line.

[18] This made it Ell's first number one, as well as the first single by a solo female artist to reach the top position on that chart since Terri Clark's "In My Next Life" in 2008.