We live in a world of pop “girlies” right now, and while that’s a triumphant thing, for them and for us, we’ve still got to maintain some kind of rooting interest in seeing one of the pop boys (boys-ies?) get a cultural moment every once in a while, too, if only for the sake of old-fashioned parity. But there’s just not much of a contest, at present. Yes, there’s been a wave of highly successful young men rise up on the pop charts these last couple of years, but they’re almost all about balladic earnestness, like they’re out to create a world full of wedding songs, skipping over the actual engagement part — the engagement in fun and wit and all the other things that ought to lead to a solemn trip down the aisle.
Benson Boone 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’s got a winning irreverence and willingness to take the piss out of himself, like in his new video for the song “Mr. Electric Blue,” where he’s sporting a “One Hit Wonder” T-shirt (that unbeatable hit being “Broken Things,” the most streamed song of 2024) and indulging in comic dialogue where he mocks his own songwriting skills. Make fun of his old-school porn ‘stache? Not only will he not shave it off, but he’ll 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 — just for you, he’ll do eight in a single performance. And in his delightful Coachella set, he acknowledged just how ready-made his voice is for rock operas by doing “Bohemian Rhapsody” with Brian May… a promise that Boone could bring back the days when singing like a girl and pure swagger could be complementary, not contradictory.
So it’s no fun to report that “American Heart,” 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’s at all rock-ish, or raucous. HIs chops are unassailable, and that goes more than a little way toward elevating earthbound material. He’s got what it takes to be ready, Freddy, but for the most part here, we’re talking about a bohemian naps-ody.
The more mirthful numbers fare best. “Mystical Magical” has already been out for a couple months, so you may have already decided how down you are with “moonbeam ice cream”; personally speaking, I’m a sucker for ridiculous language in the service of a silly love song (“get you ready for my polygon” and all that), so it kind of works. The hook is a bit cloying as an earworm, but it’s still a frothy step in the right direction for Boone. “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else,” 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’s Benson and because it’s 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.)
Amid the not-yet-familiar songs, “I Wanna Be the One You Call” is an immediate first-listen standout. The lyrics, as with most of the record, consist of a series of groaners. (“Oh, baby, I just need your number / If you have a phone,” he sings, and after minutes of consideration, I still can’t decide whether that’s supposed to be funny or not.) But who cares about words — right? — when you’ve 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.
One song that aims for that kind of liftoff and doesn’t get off the ground is “Wanted Man,” which is more or less his glam-rock number here, without managing to actually sound rock. “You rode in like a rock ‘n’ roll queen / You brought every living man to their knees,” he begins, and soon enough, he’s progressed to “I’d give up my life for your loving” — it feels more like someone who’s never met a hot woman in a bar imagining what it might be like. (It’s tempting to blame the whole song on feeding ’70s boogie-rock songs into AI and then weeding out the guitars.)
But that’s an outlier here, with extreme earnestness being the order of the day. “Man in Me” is a portrait of romantic betrayal that kicks up the angst 10 or so notches. It may, in fact, be deeply personal — “You don’t care when I’m 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 ‘Why?’” sounds like it might be the real beef of a newly minted pop star whose girl just doesn’t get it. But the way it’s elevated to melodramatically operatic heights doesn’t do the sentiments any favors.
He also gets personal with “Momma Song” and “Young American Heart.” The former ballad brings in a full swell of orchestration as Boone imagines what it will be like when his parents are gone: “Momma, I’m getting old / Does that mean you’re getting older / And older, and older?… / I’m gonna need this / When I’m holding pictures of you and that’s all that I’ve got left,” 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 “Young American Heart,” in which Boone recounts a car crash he was in way back when he was a teenager — i.e., a few years ago — and says he would have been OK dying if he got to go with his friend. These are the songs you write when you’re trying to sound old before your time.
Of 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’t great songs here, there’s 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’s a testament to how much skill and technique he brings here that I spent a lot of my second listen to “American Heart” thinking about how album 3 could be better.
For starters, next time might be the time to work with more outside writers. Although Boone has a track record with constant collaborators Jack LaFrantz and Jason Evigan, you can’t help thinking: What if, besides just weeding out the whiffs, he worked with someone who actually allowed him to be funny? No one’s asking him to be Sabrina Carpenter, but the real target might be one he’s well familiar with: Freddy Mercury knew that his operatic voice lent itself to a certain archness, though he certainly would put it to use for pure passion, too. The 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 his mostly mundane material can’t cash. At 22, he’s still got a lot of time to work up a more substantial deposit.