This time around, Benson Boone is in on the joke.
American Heart is a retread of similar beats and moves from Boone’s debut album, Fireworks and Rollerblades. Yet, it contains hints that he’s evolved his understanding of his persona and relevance in pop culture.
This appears most clearly in the music video for his single, “Mr. Electric Blue.”
The video wouldn’t be a proper Boone production without a few of his signature backflips, bedazzled jumpsuits, and trimmed mustache. But creative decisions in the video elevate an otherwise straightlaced pop hit for an artist destined to churn them out faster than he can do a backflip.
In the video, he’s wearing a shirt that reads: “One Hit Wonder” – alluding to his most popular track, “Beautiful Things.” There are incessant jokes about his chiseled body, his inability to write a real song, and the one-dimensional appeal of his fanbase (read: teens on TikTok).
The winking gestures confirm that Boone knows what people think about him. And he doesn’t care.
In fact, Boone largely doubles down on the airy, whimsical aspects of love, family, and heartbreak that consume modern pop music writ large. Yes, he may hint at times that he’s trying to grow. It’s just that he doesn’t always know how best to go about that.
American Heart mostly contains pop songs with lyrics premade for department-store and coffee-house playlists. But “Momma Song” is something different.
On “Momma Song,” Boone crafts a moving picture of a son’s realization that his mom won’t live forever. This leads him to consider the meaning of reconnection and a relationship with one’s parents.
He sings, “Take me down your old street/Tell me memories of when you were young…Cause I’m gonna need this/When I’m holding pictures of you and that’s all I got left.”
It’s a moving sentiment that doesn’t reappear throughout the album as Boone quickly returns to more comfortable territory with tepid descriptions of his love life.
On “I Wanna Be the One You Call”, Boone does exactly what the title suggests. He sings, “I wanna be the one you call/when you need anything anything at all,” showing his desire to be there for his partner.
Beyond those two moments, American Heart does little to reveal the interior and depth of Boone’s heart.
If Boone’s preferred wardrobe in concerts and music videos is any indication, he’s fairly allergic to wearing shirts.
The album’s color and thematic palette derives from Bruce Springsteen (even down to an album cover depicting a shirtless Boone draped in an American flag).
Boone’s physicality is a driving image in his music, as American Heart contains several depictions of him and his anonymous lovers taking off and putting back on their clothes.
On “Reminds Me of You” he sings, “You’ve got a million pairs of underwear/Spread out on my couch ‘cause you left ‘em there.” On “Mystical Magical” he mashes words together that make little sense until you get to “…taking off your blue jeans.” On “Mr. Electric Blue” there are innuendos made to “chaining someone down” and being “sweet enough to put him on your tongue.”
We hear mention of kissing and “getting down” with some utterances of “d—” and one use of “Jesus.”
“Wanted Man” and “Take Me Home” both dwell on passionate but potentially doomed love stories and trying desperately to grow out of whatever habits lead to quick-ending relationships. Boone sings, “Let’s go on a walk, how you’ve been?/Did that fancy art school let you in?/Well, d— it, they’d be crazy if they never saw in you/What I failed to see at 17, I must’ve missed it too.”
The misguided and misplaced love of past relationships haunts Boon,e though it is difficult to see where his rumination will ultimately lead him.
Boone’s come to represent a burgeoning ideal for young masculinity in online culture. He’s crafted a seemingly multifaceted appeal that touches most quadrants of interest for young teens from varying social backgrounds.
Boone is athletic, sensitive, goofy, obviously musical, in touch with his emotions, nominally religious, and mostly polite in his relationships.
While the Benson Boone brand of music might not be sonically avant-garde or aesthetically revolutionary, the mass market consumption of his goodwill and positive relationships appears superficially wholesome to a secular world.
On the surface, Boone’s ethos as a musician isn’t too dissimilar from a popular counterpart in Forrest Frank. But the two’s deeper purpose in music and their worldviews on life, love, and family couldn’t be more divergent.
It’s unclear what Boone hopes younger listeners learn about love from his songs. Perhaps he hasn’t thought about it, and that’s OK. But as careful consumers, it’s worth figuring out how what we listen to shapes us. Without the depth of lasting, true, Christ-like love, Boone’s message contains little worth admiring in our own relationships.
Jackson Greer is a High School English Teacher in the suburbs of Texas. He lives in Coppell, Texas with his wife, Clara. They love debating whether or not to get another cat and reading poetry together. Also, he is a former employee of Focus on the Family’s Parenting Department.
