<\/p>\n
Benson Boone is a ridiculous young man.<\/p>\n
That was the main takeaway from the 23-year-old\u2019s performance Friday night at St. Paul\u2019s Xcel Energy Center, the debut show of his first all-arena tour that will see him play more than 50 cities across the next three months.<\/p>\n
The Washington state native emerged in 2021 as a competitor on \u201cAmerican Idol\u201d who found a burst of self confidence that led to him leaving the show, despite landing in the Top 24.<\/p>\n
It was a smart move, given that it\u2019s been ages since \u201cIdol\u201d has produced an actual star. Boone, or someone managing him, realized it made far more sense to forgo network television and lean into his increasing TikTok popularity, which helped fuel interest in his early singles \u201cGhost Town\u201d and \u201cIn the Stars.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it was last year\u2019s \u201cBeautiful Things\u201d that blew Boone out of teenage phones and into the mainstream. And Boone was more than ready for the spotlight, with a sound that filtered \u201970s glam rock and sleek \u201980s pop through a modern sensibility and a flamboyant look clearly modeled after his hero Freddie Mercury (even if he comes off more like the late magician Doug Henning). Think an American Harry Styles with more teeth and bigger muscles.<\/p>\n
Oh, and he does back flips.<\/p>\n
Friday night, Boone pulled out every trick in his repertoire, radiating with the intensity of a vaudeville-era star playing to the cheapest seats in the house. He\u2019s got a strong, if not particularly nuanced, voice that served him well over the lustful screams from the audience, which was heavy on young women and families.<\/p>\n
In addition to his back flips (I lost count at five), Boone spent the 95-minute show sprinting up and down the catwalk that stretched across the arena floor, stopping to grab fans\u2019 hands in the pit below and staring directly into the cameras that followed his every move, beaming his mug to the entire sold-out arena.<\/p>\n
Yes, Benson Boone tries really hard. He was fun to watch at times, but he got tiring. The music business is full of brooding cool kids afraid to show too much effort, so I suppose it\u2019s refreshing to see someone wholeheartedly embrace fame at its biggest, brightest and tackiest. But, man, even Katy Perry would look at this guy and suggest he tone it down a bit.<\/p>\n
As for the music, the tour is built around the tracks from his sophomore album \u201cAmerican Heart,\u201d which hit streaming some six weeks after the tour went on sale and fans paid hundreds for tickets. Boone has said Bruce Springsteen was a key influence on the record, but hearing the songs live only reinforced that he sounds more like the Killers\u2019 plastic take on the Boss. (The Killers have made exactly one great album and that\u2019s \u201cHot Fuss.\u201d I will die on this hill.)<\/p>\n
Take \u201cMystical Magical,\u201d which \u201cSNL\u201d fans might remember from Boone\u2019s appearance on the show in May. Its rinky dink synths sound torn from Styles\u2019 far superior \u201cAs It Was,\u201d while the chorus interpolates the hook from Olivia Newton-John\u2019s classic \u201cPhysical.\u201d That\u2019s not even a novel move, as Doja Cat did the exact same thing with \u201cPhysical\u201d just four years ago on the, yes, far superior \u201cKiss Me More.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even more so live than on record, \u201cMomma Song\u201d sounded like a half dozen other tracks in Boone\u2019s repertoire. Like much of his material, it was all surface and no depth, a sparkly bauble made of tin foil.<\/p>\n
Then again, I don\u2019t know that the crowd cared that his songs all start to blend together. They came to see Benson Boone belt his tunes, preen for the cameras and do back flips. He delivered on all three fronts.<\/p>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Benson Boone is a ridiculous young man. That was the main takeaway from the 23-year-old\u2019s performance Friday night at St. Paul\u2019s Xcel Energy Center, the debut show of his first all-arena tour that will see him play more than 50 cities across the next three months. The Washington state native emerged in 2021 as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1946120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[27820,345276,344502],"class_list":["post-1975841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-american-idol","tag-benson-boone","tag-xcel-energy-center"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Lloyd-native-nominated-for-6-IBMA-awards.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1975841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1946120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1975841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1975841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1975841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}