Benson Boone’s debut album, Fireworks & Rollerblades, established the singer’s angsty but heartfelt falsetto and penchant for the flamboyant arena-rock stylings of 1970s acts like Elton John and Queen. A little more than a year later, American Heart finds Boone shifting the source of his inspiration to the ’80s and largely upping the tempo on songs that would sound anonymous were it not for his singular voice. The album is, if nothing else, an inadvertent test of Boone’s capabilities as a performer.
Though parallels can easily be drawn between Boone and Harry Styles and Lewis Capaldi, he’s set apart by his palpable tonal expression. On “I Wanna Be the One You Call,” his piercing belt and silky lower range render desire desperately, despite the song being a middling tale about a stranger’s glance. Closer “Young American Heart,” about a car crash the singer survived in his teens, aims for catharsis with a “live fast, die young” sentiment set to a mournfully triumphant, Springsteen-esque synth pattern, but it’s driven largely by Boone’s ecstatic vocal.
American Heart was reportedly written in 17 days, and it shows in the barebones simplicity of tracks like the catchy “Mystical Magical,” which extolls Boone’s virtues as a lover. Even beyond its interpolation of Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” the song feels thematically and structurally familiar, relating the unspecific trials of winning over a lover. Leaning on these tried-and-true lyrical staples, the track taps firmly into the pleasure center, with huge help from its goofy pre-chorus: “Moonbeam ice cream, taking off your blue jeans.”
Elsewhere, “Man in Me” nearly reaches the barbed sincerity of Fireworks & Rollerblades highlights “Cry” and “What Do You Want,” with lyrics like “You stole the last of any light inside his eyes” that contrast nicely with the track’s bouncy synth-pop production. “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else” contains some of the album’s more memorable subject matter, providing a detailed account of the reignition of an old flame while waiting for a date in a diner, and is livened up by a beat switch toward the end.
The rest of American Heart, however, amounts to competently performed filler that fails to dig very deeply into who Boone is as an artist or a person. His thorough commitment to performing the material here is impressive. Would that he spent a little more time developing it.
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That is largely our western world these days: “Style over substance”. One would argue it’s fitting for the album title “American Heart”.