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Benson Boone Is Trying Too Hard
His new album shows an endearing willingness to grow his craft but also a steely reverence to older, better pop forebearers.
“Beautiful Things,” the lead single off the 22-year-old West Coast singer-songwriter’s 2024 debut album Fireworks & Rollerblades, rode a pleading vocal and chugging guitar riff to massive renown, topping charts from Romania to Ireland to Portugal. The peppy synth-punk love song “I Wanna Be the One You Call” is a tour de force of mixing and matching familiar signatures: the airport-reggae scatting of aughts fedora-bro folk folds into the jittery melisma of the Strokes and Neon Trees before going full Queen + Adam Lambert in a shouting coda. (The video leans into Boone’s Chad side to get a rise out of haters but accidentally accentuates how often his obligatory flashy ’70s threads scream Evel Knievel when they’re going for “Rocket Man.”) The most unique points in the singer’s story — what is it like to get swept up in the whirlwind of notoriety and the Los Angeles music industry while you’re building a new worldview and persona — are likewise sidelined.
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