Benson Boone and his very American contradictions

Everything seems to be going well for him at the beginning of July. Benson Boone has won the Holy Grail: American Heart , His second album, reached number one in the US sales charts, reports the trade magazine Billboard .

A popular success that is the polar opposite of its critical reception. “Benson Boone sings as if he has something to prove but nothing to say,” criticizes, among others, The Washington Post .

So what explains the popularity of this rare “white male pop star” in America in 2025? asks The New York Times .

A question all the more fair given that Benson Boone's career was not all mapped out.

He grew up in a small town in Washington state in a Mormon family, before making a name for himself with a brief stint, at 18, on the talent show American Idol.

And to make his title Beautiful Things one of the biggest global hits of 2024.

But the singer, now 23, has more than one string to his bow. And meets several criteria for popularity in the age of social media, according to the American daily. Notably, with the distinctive mustache he sports, “facial hair in the spotlight among Gen Z celebrities.”

Musically, "he has a voice and masters the painful expression of a singer who ostentatiously strives to reach the high notes," grumbles the New York Times.

And his lyrics, peppered with references to 20th-century pop classics, are mostly dedicated to the men in his life like his father and his best friend – and very little to his partner, actress Maggie Thurmon.

Added to that is the attitude. Because “he does enough somersaults—you already know this, of course—that there are compilation videos of his stunts.”

And then there is the image he wants to project.

“He is vaguely patriotic, in a pseudo-apolitical way,” the American daily continues. This is what he portrays on the cover of American Heart by appearing covered in soot and waving an American flag “as if returning from the battlefield.”

An image that he also cultivates, especially through his look, which makes him “a sexual show-off in revealing outfits who grabs his crotch on stage.”

He's reminiscent of a certain Harry Styles in this regard, while "blurring the lines in his own way." To do this, he borrows heavily from the iconography of queer icon Freddie Mercury, from his famous mustache to his fiery stage presence, but that's far from convincing everyone - the specialist media Pitchfork , looking back on his "atrocious" concert at Coachella, judges that "Benson Boone is horrible, simply appalling."

While his music and writing are far less popular with critics than those of Chappell Roan or Olivia Rodrigo, the New York Times says that Benson Boone “is in many ways the best fit for today’s confused cultural landscape: both political and apolitical, flamboyant yet God-fearing, wildly popular yet at the same time rather banal.”