Benson Boone sings as if he has something to prove but nothing to say
In pop music, the danger of making yourself memorable is that you must eventually transcend people's memories. For Benson Boone, that means proving he's more than a singing mustache who does backflips.
On his new album, 'American Heart,' he tries and tries. These are over-sung pop songs designed to flatter the world with their unyielding sense of effort, resulting in something fizzy, dizzying, occasionally fun and fundamentally shrewd. Before we even get to Boone's voice, it's helpful to know there's such a sharp mind behind that moisturized mustache — a mind that knew quitting 'American Idol' in 2021 would make him appear more interesting than actually winning; a mind that knew it could send ripples across social media every time he performed a flip in concert because no one in this wide world — in all its untamed imagination — had ever bothered to visualize Tom Selleck fronting Bad Brains.
Boone's voice is made of elastic and caramel, and he uses it to generate muscly whimpers that sound deeply studied in the acrobatics of Bruno Mars, the roguishness of Olivia Rodrigo and the sogginess of Hozier. Toss some Freddie Mercurial pomp onto the mood board, add a spritz of perspiration from an '80s aerobics class, then shred everything into itty-bits of rainbow confetti and you're pretty much there. It's a voice that refuses to be moderated or confined, which means it sounds absolutely terrific whenever Boone rubs a lyric against the laws of alchemy or metaphysics. During the glammy thump of 'Wanted Man,' he huffs and puffs in the direction of a dancing woman made of 'liquid gold.' On 'Mystical Magical' — a hit single that brings Olivia Newton-John's 'Physical' down to mall-walking tempo — he serves a melting melody in playful falsetto, describing his love as 'moonbeam ice cream.' Fabulous. Two scoops, please.
Wait, hold on a second, what does 'moonbeam ice cream' even mean? Oh, nothing at all, according to Boone during a recent interview with the equally pointless Jimmy Fallon. Same goes for Boone's album title and its closing track, 'Young American Heart.' It's a power ballad about 'living in some crazy times,' and how death might not be that bad so long as the love and friendship felt good. In the refrain, Boone roars, 'If I'm gonna die a young American, and this was the final night we'd ever have again, I'd be just fine as long as I'm wherever you are.' Please forgive the fellow survivors of said crazy times for craving something more than complete meaninglessness, here — a disappointment that only deepens once you've seen this album's cover: an image of Boone draping the American flag over his beautifully dirty, sunburned torso. He looks as if he's been rolling around in Pennzoil and Rao's marinara, and for what?
All of this messy vapidity makes 'Momma Song' the album's standout. It's an uncharacteristically solemn orchestral number that forces Boone to imagine a future tragedy worthy of his throat's dexterity. In the refrain, the singer invites his mom on a trip down memory lane, asking her to recount her old loves, her old haunts, her favorite songs — because, 'I'm gonna need this when I'm holding pictures of you and that's all that I've got left.' In this tender, confused, bravura moment, Boone's failure to hack his music's fundamental problem ends up being the best reason to keep listening: His life has yet to grow into his voice.
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