By KEEGAN DEWITT
If you are as chronically online as I am, you are well aware of who Benson Boone is. American singer and songwriter of many infamous titles, most notably “Mystical Magical” (the moonbeam ice cream song), Boone mostly dabbles in the pop genre of music. What makes him stand out, though, is the fact that he was essentially shunned by social media for how seemingly bad his music is.
Before you read on, I suggest you take a minute to sit down and actually listen to his music. It is very easy for a person to form an opinion on something that they have not actually heard or read before (which is actually relevant later on), and judge it simply on the little snippet they got.
Benson James Boone is a fairly new artist, having his first online appearance being on “American Idol” in 2021 and a debut album released just last year. He is also known for his backflips, which are a staple in every performance he does. His rise to fame through music came shortly after his song releases, which gained popularity almost instantly. Other than that, he appears as any other generic Gen Z music artist with only one catch; he always had something to hate about him, according to the online presence. It was surprising when seemingly overnight the Benson Boone hate train suddenly stopped. This garnered a small reaction out of people, even causing him to make a handful of videos himself. One was captioned “I’m not used to moonbeam positivity.” So, why did this happen?
This switch up is actually not a new thing. It has, in fact, been happening since early August. However, it is still a slow trend in people suddenly “realizing” how his music sounds. Which is, according to some, good. Therein lies the key word; trend. It is a current trend to like him, and you are officially on the outs if you dislike his songs.
We rarely realize how much social media trends affect us. I do not intend to sound like a parent of some sort, but it is really concerning to see just how fast people change opinions on a topic. The official term for this is group mentality: “the tendency of the people in a group to think and behave in ways that conform with others in the group rather than as individuals.” Following trends is not an inherently bad thing, nor does it make you a bad person, but keeping that middle ground between following them and also retaining your own sense of identity is immensely important. This is hard when the built-in algorithms become a glorified echochamber, only repeating what you have interacted with, and you lose sense of what’s real or not.
Benson Boone is just one case of falling in the trends, and becoming a target to hardcore group mentality. I have no true bias to Boone. I never really listened to his music before it started popping up on my TikTok feed, but my one takeaway is that I really think people are overreacting on how bad his songs are. To me, they sound like the generic pop music you would hear at the grocery store. I will say that his lyricism is definitely a choice, especially with the aforementioned “Mystical Magical” song. The lines “Moonbeam ice cream / Taking off your blue jeans / Dancing at the movies / ‘Cause it feels so mystical, magical” were where most people’s dislike began. Nobody really ever listened to the song beyond that point, or even listened to it at all, and relied solely on TikTok videos to hear it, which is the main reason why I say Benson Boone is a victim to trends.
While this may gain Boone some sympathy, he is not the first person for this to happen to. Modern-day artists like Doja Cat, Lana-Del-Rey, and Charli XCX went through this same exact cycle, and came out averaging 50 million listeners-per-month on Spotify. It even goes beyond Boone, infecting other aspects of how we consume media as a whole. Influencers, fashion, brands, movies, tv shows, food, the list goes on for how trends morph what we perceive.
He is just one singer among a sequence of music artists who trended online, became popular, and subsequently “fell off” once he stopped making anything worthy of the algorithm. Even if he makes it out of this sudden surge of popularity, his music may just end in the label of “TikTok music,” which, honestly, is an even worse fate than being called cringe.
This is why group mentality, especially on social media, can be so harmful. To the artist, it appears as an everlasting ride of either following the trends or sticking it out until you are able to peak again. To the listener, it is nearly impossible to keep up with what is “in” or “out” and continuing the facade of being trendy. It may not be so important to someone my age (or older) when you have already found your niche in music, but it can mean the world to someone younger who is experimenting with their own music taste for the first time. It is easier for some to just have surface-level opinions of an artist, and move on.
I am not saying that you have to enjoy Benson Boone, like every single artist you see on your feeds, or even listen to every song that you hear in full. What I am asking is that when you inevitably get that one video of “Oh my goodness, [INSERT ARTIST HERE]’s new song is so bad!” you will take a minute to yourself and use your brain to form your own opinion. Do you actually have a reason to dislike this singer, or is it a subconscious reaction to what you have seen online?
Featured image: Betty Cavicchia’28
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