Benson Boone<\/a> has seemed like maybe he could be the cure for that, as somebody with aspirations to be a sly showman as well as rank sentimentalist. He\u2019s got a winning irreverence and willingness to take the piss out of himself, like in his new video for the song \u201cMr. Electric Blue,\u201d where he\u2019s sporting a \u201cOne Hit Wonder\u201d T-shirt (that unbeatable hit being \u201cBeautiful Things,\u201d the most streamed song of 2024) and indulging in comic dialogue where he mocks his own songwriting skills. You want to make fun of his old-school porn \u2018stache? Not only will he not shave it off, like Morgan Wallen dropped his mullet, but he\u2019ll further invite your scrutiny by putting on a glam-rock-evoking, chest-hair-bring jumpsuit. Do you think him doing his signature backflip is corny? Fine \u2014 just for you, he\u2019ll do eight in a single performance. That\u2019s a high level of moxie, before we even get to his indisputably impressive vocals. In his delightful Coachella set, he acknowledged just how ready-made his voice is for rock operas by doing \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d with Brian May\u2026 a promise that Boone could bring back the days when singing like a girl and pure swagger could be complementary, not contradictory.<\/p>\n\n\tSo it\u2019s no fun to report that \u201cAmerican Heart,\u201d his second album, is mostly not very much fun. There are scattered attempts to bring in some of the cheekiness and cockiness that is a part of his performing image. But mostly it seems that, as a recording artist, anyway, Boone really does want to remain in the realm of the Teddy Swims-es or even Alex Warrens of the world, with material that is mawkish before it\u2019s at all rock-ish, or raucous. HIs chops are unassailable, and that goes more than a little way toward elevating earthbound material. He\u2019s got what it takes to be ready, Freddie, but for the most part here, we\u2019re talking about a bohemian naps-ody.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe more mirthful numbers fare best. \u201cMystical Magical\u201d has already been out for a couple months, so you may have already decided how down you are with \u201cmoonbeam ice cream\u201d; personally speaking, I\u2019m a sucker for ridiculous language in the service of a silly love song (\u201cget you ready for my polygon\u201d and all that), so it kind of works. The hook is a bit cloying as an earworm, but it\u2019s still a frothy step in the right direction for Boone. \u201cSorry I\u2019m Here for Someone Else,\u201d another advance single, does a nice job of capturing that uneasy feeling of running into a cherished ex on a mediocre date. If this were a country song, it would be played for ruefulness, but because it\u2019s Benson and because it\u2019s pop, it ends with Boone running back into the arms of his true love. (It also ends rather abruptly, as several of the songs on the album do, in a seeming rush to wrap the whole record up in an efficient 30 minutes.) <\/p>\n
\n\tAmid the not-yet-familiar songs, \u201cI Wanna Be the One You Call\u201d is an immediate first-listen standout. The lyrics, as with most of the record, consist of a series of groaners. (\u201cOh, baby, I just need your number \/ If you have a phone,\u201d he sings, and after minutes of consideration, I still can\u2019t decide whether that\u2019s supposed to be funny or not.) But who cares about words \u2014 right? \u2014 when you\u2019ve got an ace track that is the only one on the album produced and co-written by Malay (Frank Ocean, Lorde), who brings a vibe worthy of a Harry Styles record to an album that otherwise comes off as more of an easygoing wash.<\/p>\n
\n\tOne song that aims for that kind of liftoff and doesn\u2019t get off the ground is \u201cWanted Man,\u201d which is more or less his glam-rock number here, without managing to actually sound rock. \u201cYou rode in like a rock \u2018n\u2019 roll queen \/ You brought every living man to their knees,\u201d he begins, and soon enough, he\u2019s progressed to \u201cI\u2019d give up my life for your loving\u201d \u2014 it feels more like someone who\u2019s never met a hot woman in a bar imagining what it might be like. (It\u2019s tempting to blame the whole song on feeding \u201970s boogie-rock songs into AI and then weeding out the guitars.)<\/p>\n
\n\tBut that\u2019s an outlier here, with extreme earnestness being the order of the day. \u201cMan in Me\u201d is a portrait of romantic betrayal that kicks up the angst 10 or so notches. It may, in fact, be deeply personal \u2014 \u201cYou don\u2019t care when I\u2019m falling down, slowly burning out \/ And the light and crowds and cameras in my face are getting louder \/ And I need some time \/ You say \u2018Why?’\u201d sounds like it might be the real beef of a newly minted pop star whose girl just doesn\u2019t get it. But the way it\u2019s elevated to melodramatically operatic heights doesn\u2019t do the sentiments any favors.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe also gets personal with \u201cMomma Song\u201d and \u201cYoung American Heart.\u201d The former ballad brings in a full swell of orchestration as Boone imagines what it will be like when his parents are gone: \u201cMomma, I\u2019m getting old \/ Does that mean you\u2019re getting older \/ And older, and older?\u2026 \/ I\u2019m gonna need this \/ When I\u2019m holding pictures of you and that\u2019s all that I\u2019ve got left,\u201d he croons, creating a picture of a woman who is nearing her deathbed. Then, in the music video, she sits down beside him on the piano and looks to be barely 40, so how flattered she should be by his evocation of creeping decrepitude is up for question. But is it sweet and heartfelt? Yes, give it that, The same for \u201cYoung American Heart,\u201d in which Boone recounts a car crash he was in way back when he was a teenager \u2014 i.e., a few years ago \u2014 and says he would have been OK dying if he got to go with his friend. These are the songs you write when you\u2019re trying to sound old before your time.<\/p>\n
\n\tOf course, these songs play less ridiculously on record than they read on paper because Boone has the kind of phenomenal voice that can push a lot of average material into the plus category just through sheer lungpower and technique alone. If you can bypass the fact that there aren\u2019t great songs here, there\u2019s still a lot left to be impressed by. It could be that hearing Boone go from his chest voice to his head voice and back again will never get old. It\u2019s a testament to how much skill and technique he brings here that I spent a lot of my second listen to \u201cAmerican Heart\u201d thinking about how album 3 could be better. <\/p>\n
\n\tFor starters, next time might be the time to work with more outside writers, however comfortable Boone has been in his ongoing collaboration with Jack LaFrantz. (He said in a recent interview that he and LaFrantz wrote the album in a brisk 17 days, and unfortunately, it sounds like it.) You can\u2019t help thinking: What if, besides having an editor who knew how to weed out the whiffs, he worked with someone who actually allowed him to be funny? No one\u2019s asking him to be Sabrina Carpenter, but the real target might be one he\u2019s well familiar with: Freddie Mercury knew that his operatic voice lent itself to a certain archness, though he certainly would put it to use for pure passion, too.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe real prescription for a trampoline leap forward will be up to Boone. We just know that, for now, his winning persona has written a check that the mostly mundane material can\u2019t cash. At 22, he\u2019s still got a lot of time to work up a more substantial deposit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We live in a world of pop \u201cgirlies\u201d right now, and while that\u2019s a triumphant thing, for them…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[301,171,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-benson-boone","tag-entertainment","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114717661918883398","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}