Monroe’s breakout pop star Benson Boone comes home to Showbox SoDo – The Seattle Times
The biggest song in America by someone other than Taylor Swift belongs to Monroe’s breakout pop star Benson Boone.
The 21-year-old pop singer and “American Idol” dropout had been bubbling on TikTok for a few years. With a walloping power croon that mixes the clarity and emotional gravitas of Adele with a dash of Freddie Mercury’s operatic tendencies and penchant for full-fisted rock crescendos, Boone’s (apparently natural) talent couldn’t be denied.
Four months ago, Boone’s career rocket-launched to another level with the release of “Beautiful Things,” a poppy, piano-led folk rocker that hit No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and would currently sit atop the chart if not for Swift’s domination of the top 14 songs. The young singer with an old-soul flavor released his debut album “Fireworks & Rollerblades” last month and made his late-night debut on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” along a sold-out tour that’s doubling as both a coming-out party and victory lap.
Winding down the North American leg before heading overseas for more sold-out dates, Boone returned to Washington on Friday for his first big homecoming show amid his ascent to stardom. Showbox SoDo, packed wall to wall with giddy fans, was a significant step up from the 300-capacity Madame Lou’s he played just a year and a half ago and it’s a safe bet his next Seattle show will be in an even bigger room.
Taking the stage to a sea of camera-rolling cellphones, Boone — wearing a cropped teal Mariners jersey — swayed and swooned along to glistening pop rocker “Be Someone.” Boone’s sweeping delivery came off like a cross between Brandon Flowers and My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way on the sprightly Killers-esque number. “Beautiful Things” might be the life-altering smash, but it was immediately clear fans already knew the words to every song off his month-old album.
Boone wielded his hefty voice like a knight with an oversized sword, delivering devastating blows in one fluid motion before turning it over for a gentle backhand stroke soft enough to spread butter on “Drunk in My Mind.” An elite balladeer with stylistic range, Boone made like a seasoned pop-soul troubadour at times, later delivering soaring folk-pop anthems with “My Greatest Fear” and the heart-pouring “Pretty Slowly,” a cathartic unreleased number.
It’s extra impressive considering the former diver on the Monroe High School swim team only got serious about music a few years ago.
Boone grew up playing “a little bit of piano,” he told MTV Asia last fall, though he didn’t start singing until his best friend asked him to play piano with them in a battle of the bands. The day before the show, their singer quit and after some debate, Boone, who was unavailable for an interview before his Seattle show, decided to give it a go.
“I went out on stage and I started singing and my voice kinda just came out of me,” Boone told MTV Asia. “It’s like I unlocked something I didn’t know I had and I stopped halfway through the first verse and just looked around. I was so shocked that I just sang.”
After pausing to collect himself, they restarted the song and wound up winning the battle of the bands.
“It was like the best feeling of my life,” Boone said. “My mom was front row bawling her eyes out, I was just confused. It was so sick.”
As fate would have it, it was another (much bigger deal) singing competition a year later that would get Boone noticed when he auditioned for “American Idol” in 2021. A then 18-year-old Boone dazzled the judges with a stirring take on Aiden Martin’s “Punchline.”
“I’m just calling you a natural talent,” Lionel Richie gushed during Boone’s 2021 audition. “There’s just some folks that need to practice, and there’s some folks that just are gifted.”
Katy Perry went even further, predicting he could win “American Idol” if he wanted to.
He didn’t want to.
Instead, Boone left the show and pursued music through other channels, telling MTV Asia that “it wasn’t for me, so I quit.” Later that year he inked a deal with Night Street, a Warner Records imprint helmed by Dan Reynolds of pop rockers Imagine Dragons. His first single (and the first song he ever wrote) “Ghost Town,” which was gently crushing on Friday, became a minor hit after its fall 2021 release. It was a promising start for the young musician who hadn’t attempted to write a song until Reynolds contacted him out of the blue.
In 2022, Boone scored another modest hit with piano ballad “In the Stars” peaking at No. 82, a song that has since gone platinum, amassing even more Spotify streams than “Beautiful Things.” The certified tear-jerker, with a reference to Monroe’s Woods Creek Road, was written for a close relative who died a few years ago, Boone explained from the stage, and made for one of the most potent moments of Friday’s show.
“This song means a lot to not only me, but to a lot of people in this room,” Boone said, asking fans to pocket their phones and instead “feel this song with me.”
For all the vocal gymnastics Boone executed Friday, he spent almost as much time doing actual gymnastics on stage — busting out nonchalant back flips, tumbling front flips off the risers and pencil diving off the stage, putting those swim-team diving skills to use.
Other than his custom M’s gear, Boone only briefly nodded to his local roots Friday during a Freddie Mercury-channeling call-and-response before a participatory “Forever and a Day.” The anthemic singalong felt like a dress rehearsal for a larger stage.
Capping his acrobatic 90-minute set with “Beautiful Things,” featuring Boone’s signature power wail and a bruising folk-rock breakdown for a chorus, was the final haymaker of the night that felt like a hometown pause to soak in Boone’s whirlwind shot to fame.
“Thank you for the love you’ve shown this song, because it has changed my life,” Boone said introducing the no-doubt closer. “And it will continue to change my life for the rest of my life.”
With one last running handspring across the stage and a blown kiss, Boone was off. But this is only the beginning.
