“Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone, Monday, July 8, 2024
Last year, it seemed that Billboard’s Hot 100 was gridlocked by legacy acts. Besides K-pop groups, two artists were able to break through last year: David Kushner and Noah Kahan, folksy singer-songwriters known for their hits “Stick Season” and “Daylight.” Pop critics were divided on the singer-songwriter trends. The New York Times Popcast critics complained about the monotony of “Daylight,” especially considering the Indie Pop and Alternative acts on the fringes of the Hot 100. YouTuber Rick Beato, however, praised the “Stick Season,” saying something to the effect that these songs were making music “sound like music again” when he counted them down on one of his countdowns of the most popular song countdowns. A few months later, rock guitars seem to be making a comeback on the pop charts.
BUT I THANK GOD EVERY DAY FOR THE GIRL HE SENT MY WAY. Noah Kahan’s music out-charted David Kushner’s on the Hot 100. Their breakthrough success certainly wasn’t out of nowhere with the massive country chart-toppers last year. While neither Kahan nor Kushner was associated with Country music, their folk-driven white, presumably straight, young man sound countered years of flamboyant electro-pop and trap-beat Hip-Hop reigning atop Billboard’s flagship chart. This year’s Hot 100 looks like a course correction in the first half of the year—female pop stars, male and female rappers, and a Christmas song in January as the chart numbers are always a few weeks behind. But two number-one hits and one number-two hit feel like they owe at least a nod to Kushner and Kahan for paving the re-emergent singer-songwriter trend in pop music. Number one hits: “Lose Control” and “Too Sweet”— bluesy, non-Country associated songs by Teddy Swims and Hozier topped the Hot 100, and newcomer Benson Boone reached number 2 with his international hit “Beautiful Things.”
I FOUND MY MIND; I’M FEELING SANE. After dropping out of Brigham Young University-Idaho, Benson Boone focused on building his career as a singer. In 2021, he auditioned for American Idol, making it to the top 24 on Season 19 before dropping out of the show. Later in 2021, Boone signed to Night Street Records, a label owned by Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds. Benson released several singles, seeing some domestic and international success with his debut single, the JT Daly-produced “Ghost Town.” Boone’s biggest song, so far, is a song about mental health, love, and possibly a transactional God. “Beautiful Things” reached number 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Similar to Hozier’s “Too Sweet,” “Beautiful Things” is a rock-based ballad, almost a throwback to the ‘90s or ‘00s when pop-rock was a viable genre. The song touches on Boone’s presumable faith background, partially quoting the book of Job with “the Lord gives and takes away.” Today’s song is riddled with anxiety and the belief that the good things in life don’t last. The “girl [his] parents love” could reject him. However, the anxiety feels like it’s on a grander, more biblical scale, such as a car accident, cancer, or the earth swallowing her up. In the second verse, Benson asks “If everything’s good and it’s great, why do I sit and wait till it’s gone?” The catastrophizing doesn’t seem to be limited just to the girl. With a career trajectory seemingly on the up and up a #2 Hot 100 single and opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour in the UK, few singer-songwriters, particularly non-country male singer-songwriters today, stay on the pop charts for very long in the 2020s. Any singer’s fifteen minutes of fame can be up with no guarantees of a follow-up hit. But because we’re always rewriting the guidebook for how to be a pop star, these observations may be moot.
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