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Benson Boone’s track “Stunning Issues” has crossed over from TikTok phenomenon to full-on international chart hit.
Dennis Leupold
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Dennis Leupold
Benson Boone’s track “Stunning Issues” has crossed over from TikTok phenomenon to full-on international chart hit.
Dennis Leupold
This essay first appeared within the NPR Music e-newsletter. Join for early entry to articles like this one, Tiny Desk exclusives, listening suggestions and extra.
At the moment I’ve a track caught in my head. Truly it has been in there for weeks, resurfacing, irritating me as a lot because it provides me pleasure. In fact, solely a fraction of Benson Boone’s “Stunning Issues” will not let me go: the second when this TikTok-turned-global-chart-hit takes off like a bottle rocket from the nice and cozy grassy discipline of its strummy starting and explodes, busting open the heavens as Boone reveals off the bare-chested Chris Cornell physique beneath the Noah Kahan Pendleton. “Do not … take … these BEAUTIFUL THINGS that I’ve GOT,” Boone wails because the crescendo hits. Seconds earlier than, the track was a heat mattress the place Boone lay with the girlfriend who’d gained his mother and father’ approval; now the entire room is on fireplace.
I really like “Stunning Issues.” I additionally form of hate it. It is a track of uplift with a bitter core, one which feels greater than just a little threatening to the article of Boone’s adoration — that girlfriend who’s allowed to spend the evening in his household residence, however who might stroll out simply as simply, wreck all the things, go away him screaming into the void that that explosive refrain opens huge. The track is unquestionably grounded in modern Christian music — one thing my niece Meghan, my advisor on all issues Kahan-adjacent, observed earlier than I did, texting me that American Idol dropout Boone “kinda feels like a really proficient megachurch singer.” I’ve been to such companies, and know the sensation of being enraptured by hundreds of voices climbing scales in unison; it felt superb, however I knew I used to be being manipulated. “Stunning Issues” does the identical factor: It soothes, pins you to the bottom, comforts once more. Positively John Donne! Batter my coronary heart, cute Benson Boone! Who can resist? I am unable to, and that is just a little off-putting.
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However I am fascinated by the twist that Boone’s leap towards grunge glory presents. Most likely unintentionally, the track’s refrain affords a window into masculinity on the verge of turning poisonous. Boone’s persona is just about sweetness and light-weight; he is a Mormon, the one boy in a household of 4 sisters who spent his childhood in Washington State backpacking and perfecting his backflips. I admire that his breakthrough hit reveals one other facet of this straightforward soul, the existential insecurity that, in any particular person, can change into livid if it festers. The track’s mild verses inform of the narrator’s troubled thoughts, his incapacity to belief somebody who affords him companionship and his tendency to be passive-aggressive, to “sit and wait until it is gone.” The climactic refrain brilliantly captures what can occur when a boy who’s used to getting what he needs abruptly realizes your entire world wasn’t constructed for him.
The factor is, although, it’s good to hear the entire track to understand this complexity, and most of the people did not, no less than initially. As a TikTok favourite, it was decreased to the refrain, clipped to just a bit over eight bars, the climax with out the foreplay or the afterglow. “Stunning Issues” loses loads when it is excerpted. However whilst its deeper potential fades away, it features the flexibleness TikTok requires: It is not a few particular — if extensively relatable — type of emotional instability. Now it may be utilized by anybody who needs to convey catharsis.
TikTok teaches us to focus completely on hooks and choruses. This is not a radical shift from earlier listening practices, precisely — in lots of settings earlier than the web age, hooks and choruses leapt out and have been repeated, embedding themselves in followers’ heads. Attain for a reminiscence with me: You are at a present by your favourite band … to illustrate it is My Chemical Romance. Frank and Ray are furiously riffing, the rhythm part pummels out that primal rock beat to “I am Not Okay.” Gerard screams out the primary few phrases, however as he does you are yelling in your pal’s ear, eyeing the recent goth a row away from you, dodging the empty beer cup some a**gap simply threw. Then the refrain comes, and also you’re shouting, completely swept up: “I’M NOT… O…. KAAAYYY!” You are immersed. That is your favourite track, for no less than the lengths of that outburst. The refrain known as you to consideration.
The identical factor can occur as you weave by visitors on the freeway, do reps on the health club or julienne carrots for dinner. The refrain is often what grabs you. Typically it is one other track factor, a phrase or sound that jumps out — even sound results, just like the gunshots that give approach to a money register ding in M.I.A.’s basic “Paper Planes.” (My palms involuntarily sign a stickup once I hear it.) In circumstances like this, the entire track nonetheless registers, however that arresting factor is what grabs you and what lingers. Consider it this manner: The track is a face with which you fall in love. When somebody asks you what captured your coronary heart, you’d possible say, their mouth. Their eyes. Love that lasts embraces one other particular person’s complete being, however attraction is a laser.
TikTok is all attraction, no large image. The numerous who’ve soundtracked their TikToks with “Stunning Issues” have used it to indicate appreciation for the track, but in addition to commemorate the joys of turning into engaged, exhibit the unregulated enthusiasm of their toddlers, share the satisfaction of a superb exercise routine and far more. That is what makes “Stunning Issues” an excellent pop track: At precisely the second when its distinguishing energy emerges, it additionally empties out to accommodate no matter a listener brings to it. What it does not do is assure that the track will final. One thing has to create a basis from musical and lyrical element. The tremble in Shirley Alston Reeves’ voice in “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”; the choir hollering “let it rock, let it roll” that Mick Ronson persuaded John Mellencamp so as to add to “Jack & Diane”; the swirling reggaeton percussion in “Hips Do not Lie” — these particulars make a pop hit influential, beloved or each, and assist it dwell past its season.
It feels like I am speaking about what stands the check of time right here, and questioning if Boone’s rock rant has that potential. I really do not completely consider within the check of time, no less than not as that cliché is often deployed. There is no such thing as a pure house of listening aside from the current context — not now, not in 5 years or 50. That is another excuse it may be troublesome to know if a well-liked track is superior or terrible. It may well hit good when the tradition wants it and fall flat a yr later. Or it may come again round. Twenty years in the past I might not have laid a cent on a Creed revival; the Florida band, whose swooping ballads provide a frisson not dissimilar to the one provided by “Stunning Issues,” was as uncool as music will get, completely reviled by critics as harbingers of a rock and roll technology’s slide from the vanguard to the clearance rack. (Creed was genuinely in style; I attempted to understand the band’s attraction again then, whereas reviewing for The New York Occasions.) Now, with assist from not solely the Texas Rangers however from innovators like SZA, Scott Stapp’s glory engine has been refurbished and is mounting an enormous comeback tour. This growth does not imply Creed’s music is timeless, simply that there is room for such unapologetic bombast — I imply ardour — in music once more. Or do I imply bombast? It will depend on your ears, your circumstances, your concept of what goes into making a wonderful factor.
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