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The viral star steps out with his second collection of earnest pop

Benson Boone hails from tiny Monroe, Washington, but his songs tackle big dreams that showcase his global ambition. After a number of singles and his debut EP, Walk Me Home…, the small-town kid made good on his potential and ramped up anticipation for his debut album with “Beautiful Things,” a pensive, guitar-driven slow-burner that takes cues from alt-country thrillers before evolving into an emo-pop anthem. The track was a bold introduction to Fireworks & Rollerblades, which builds on the cathartic ecstasy of Walk Me Home… and finds Boone expanding his scope into unexpected territory.

Boone is an enthusisastic lover on Fireworks, like on “Be Someone,” where he puts his cards on the table: “Wanna be that guy that’s making it hard for you to sleep at night/I want you to call me when it’s getting late/You can tell me anything.” The synths are bouncy and the drums pull rhythm from disco influences, giving the song an undeniable pep. In contrast, piano ballad “In the Stars” finds Boone paying tribute to a departed friend, reckoning with religion and the afterlife, the pure pain of losing someone he loved very much. It’s in this track that he showcases his power, pouring his entire being into these devotions of love, heartbreak, tragedy, and the little moments in between.

The year 2024 was a game-changing one for Benson Boone, the Monroe, Washington, native and American Idol dropout whose breakthrough hit “Beautiful Things” was among the year’s most-streamed songs. The lead single of his debut album Fireworks & Rollerblades was a runaway success that brought the 22-year-old to the stage of the 2025 Grammys, where he seamlessly busted a backflip off of a grand piano before launching into the sledgehammer chorus. As for his second flip of the show-stealing performance—that one was unplanned. “My thought process is that there’s not a thought process. It’s more like when I’m up there, I just do whatever feels right,” Boone told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe shortly after the performance. “During the moment, I was like, ‘You know what? I’ve been standing here for a while and I’m just going to do a flip.’ And that’s how it went.”

With his second album, American Heart, the newcomer known for his electric stage presence and Freddie Mercury-esque falsetto steps out of the shadow of his biggest hit. Its 10 tracks, all written by Boone and frequent collaborator Jack LaFrantz, live in the anthemic sweet spot between Springsteen-style heartland rock and the arena-ready pop-rock of The Killers (particularly on “Young American Heart,” whose “live fast, die young” narrative was inspired by a near-fatal car accident Boone got into in high school). He stays grounded with a pair of songs in honor of his parents: the tear-jerking “Momma Song” plus “Mr Electric Blue,” a prog-pop epic about hero-worshipping his dad (who, mind you, can do backflips well into his fifties). The energy is up compared to his first record: As Boone explained to Lowe, lead single “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else” began as a sullen piano ballad and became a pulsing synth-pop banger about a run-in with an ex at a diner.

Can lightning strike twice as far as another life-changing, world-conquering hit? Boone’s more interested in settling into himself. “I have such an eager mindset, where I’m always now, now, now: What’s going to happen right now? How are people going to react right now? What can I get right now?” he told Lowe. “In this career, that’s really good at times, but also it can get a little unhealthy, because it takes time—to figure out who you even want to be, and where you want to go, and what your goals are, and what kind of music you like, and who you want to make it with and what you’re trying to give the world.” He’s still evolving, he admits: “The music you hear from me right now probably won’t be the music you hear from me in 10 years. But I think I’ve finally found a version of my music that I really, really, really love.”