Benson Boone – Mystical Magical

Chartsare Doomed – Horrible Terrible

[Video]
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Mark Sinker: ‘Section 20. How the Sphere encouraged me in a Vision: “Look yonder,” said my Guide, “in Flatland thou hast lived; of Lineland thou hast received a vision; thou hast soared with me to the heights of Spaceland; now, in order to complete the range of thy experience, I conduct thee downward to the lowest depth of existence, even to the realm of Pointland, the Abyss of No dimensions. Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now listen.”’ (from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin A. Abbott, 1884) 
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Just ghastly.
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Ian Mathers: What the fuck did Olivia Newton-John ever do to you, dude? (Supertramp probably deserve it a little, though.)
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Taylor Alatorre: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
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Kayla Beardslee: STOP INTERPOLATING SONGS THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN DONE A MILLION TIMES, EVERY DAY I GET CLOSER TO DEATH
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Leah Isobel: For this kind of “you know you really want it ;)” conceit to work, it would need a performer with overflowing, undeniable charisma. Or, barring that, at least enough swagger and warmth to give off the impression that he’s actually heard of the concept of sex. Benson is not that performer; he has a strangely mannered way of singing that calls to mind an owl (“whooonce you know…”) with the enunciation tics of a theatre kid (“…all you do is push me out“). So when he sings a line like “Just relax and join my company,” it sounds like he’s making a sales pitch. Join Boone Inc.! We do casual Fridays! Still, he projects an essential decency that blunts the possibility of a harsher read.
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Claire Davidson: When I first hit play on “Mystical Magical,” I was genuinely shocked by what I was hearing: how did an ex-Mormon American Idol contestant—who rose to fame from the success of last year’s most inept hit songs—find a credibly slinky bass groove to anchor his latest single? More important, how the hell did he manage to sell it, playing the flirt with just enough smirking distance to be a convincing leading man? Alas, if it seems to good to be true, it usually is, and such is the case with “Mystical Magical,” too. Sadly, the song cannot sustain that coy, push-pull dynamic beyond the verses, as evinced by its pre-chorus, where Benson Boone makes a bold leap into his upper register to announce the sincerity of his affections. The problem is, though, as “Beautiful Things” so painfully demonstrated last year, is that, while Boone is a capable performer, he doesn’t exactly have the widest range as a vocalist. As such, he’s forced to deliver these revelations in the kind of hyper-articulate falsetto you’d sooner hear from a children’s movie musical villain than a pop star on the rise. This reduces a potentially sauntering anthem into a hilarious piece of high camp, helped by neither the emergence of strings on the chorus nor the lyrical evocations of… moonbeams and ice cream. Even Boone’s promise of unforgettable chemistry sounds vaguely threatening, proclaiming that “nothing’s gonna feel right” after his partner experiences it—and, in any event, who refers to their own romantic prowess as either mystical or magical? Oh, well—if we’re settling for theater-pop, it’s still better produced than half of what’s on the Wicked soundtrack.
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Katherine St. Asaph: After Mark Zuckerberg assassinated his character via association, Benson Boone is probably doomed to a year or so of disproportionate hate. On “Mystical Magical” it’s disproportionate for sure — the song feels like it was intended for someone else but somehow ended up with Boone, despite sitting awkwardly in his vocal range. Maybe Lana Del Rey? Not Chappell Roan, although Boone is kind of doing the “Good Luck, Babe!” cadence.
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Jel Bugle: A sort of Harry Styles Magnum P.I vibe. It’s kind of flat, metronomic, a B-grade performer with a D-grade song. Mundanely miserable. 
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Tim de Reuse: Some phenomena are the kind of thing you can only have one of in a track. Emphasizing the wrong syllable to force a rhyme; emphasizing assonance between two words that barely sound alike; mangling a turn of phrase to jam it awkwardly into the meter of your verse. You can do that once in a pop song. It can spice things up. It’s cheeky. Boone has elected to employ this technique on nearly every fucking line.
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Alfred Soto: When he tries a star-fucked falsetto — Justin Timberlake singing “Late Night Talking” at a Memphis karaoke night — in the bridge, the sky tore asunder. 
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Julian Axelrod: On one hand, hearing Benson Boone’s music without the Party City Freddie Mercury cosplay forces me to appreciate the sturdy song craft happening under all the moonbeam ice cream bullshit. On the other hand, I just have to sit here and imagine this man doing flips like I’m some kid listening to a radio serial during the Dust Bowl? No thank you!
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Nortey Dowuona: What the fuck is it with flat, pedestrian drum programming outside of rap. Did pop producers forget that having dynamics and groove does not come from playing slow kick snare patterns at the bottom of the mix, especially since there’s plenty of toms, hihats, cymbals and rims to play? If this had to be an easily reproducible drum pattern for the drummer, give them a better and more durable pattern so when they get to vamp, or riff, they don’t just play by ear to juice it in the last 50 seconds before the sudden end. Evan Blair, who apparently handled the production, including the drums, couldn’t throw in one snare riff. Getting this song to work was not impossible; merely difficult, a simple matter of tom/snare/hihat/kick. Instead here is Funk Loop 5 from a stock DAW sample pack.
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Hannah Jocelyn: I always saw Harry Styles’ music as like doing the same equation but somehow different results each time. Basically nothing separates his best songs from his worst ones. (“As It Was” is an accidental masterpiece – the songwriting so vague, the performance so nondescript that it somehow perfectly captured the dissociation of the Biden era.) But now I understand that Styles/Harpoon et al might be secret geniuses instead of lucky flukes, after seeing someone try so hard to recreate it and winding up with “what if Good Luck Babe wasn’t about anything?” Oh my god, this chorus is so bad, can we stop interpolating “Physical” into every pop song please?? How do you go for Freddie Mercury and wind up at Tiny Tim?? The verses aren’t even that bad! If Benson just stopped using his falsetto, it would be a Boone to us all.
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Scott Mildenhall: So much the sound of someone ungoofy straining for eccentricity that it does become goofy. The interpolation is less signposted than JCDecaux’d, a distraction from all the fainter things about this that feel familiar. It’s of a piece with Conan Gray’s “Lonely Dancers” and many prior American efforts, evidently borne of a land where Wang Chung were the most iconic band of the 80s. And really, would that be such a bad thing?
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Joshua Lu: More AJR than Queen, slightly more enjoyable than grating. I don’t quite understand all the umbrage.
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