Review Summary: Don't take these beautiful things that I've got
Sometimes I'm reminded of just how much of a bubble we are all in. Occasionally I come across artists that have almost no discourse on online music review sites, yet have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of monthly listeners. Enter Benson Boone - a man who's most recent success is being nominated by the Grammy's for Best New Artist (an award that was then given to Chappell Roan) and performing his biggest hit, "Beautiful Things" live there. Boone also has over 40 million monthly listeners, but you wouldn't know that from how little he's spoken of in music nerd circles; hell, you may even have been like "who the hell is this guy?" when he was nominated by the Grammys. But regardless of that, he's certainly one of the most notable names in the mainstream when it comes to "rock" music in the 2020s. The aforementioned "Beautiful Things" has a couple hundred million shy of almost 2 billion Spotify streams.
As for
Fireworks & Rollerblades, the very limited amount of discourse on the internet leans fairly negative. Most of the existing criticism centers around Boone's vocal performance, as his over-the-top caterwauling proves to be at the very least, a polarizing piece of the puzzle. I personally quite enjoyed "Beautiful Things", and after having sat through all fifty minutes of this project I can tell you that as overplayed as that song may be, it's easily the highlight here and shows what Boone can do with more time to refine his craft. Much like the rest of the album, its aims are to be an emotionally captivating experience with the level of pomp of a megachurch.
Yes, Benson Boone is a Christian artist, and he often calls to it on this album. In a weird way, this album is quite similar to what someone like Jelly Roll would do on albums like
Whitsitt Chapel or
Beautifully Broken, but the differences are pretty large. Boone is a 22 year old man who's only been in music for about four years and writes contemporary pop rock, whilst Jelly Roll is an ex-convict, former drug dealer, and rapper that switched up to country music in the past few years, and he's around forty. The similarities though? It's more alike than you'd think. Both write about their emotions from the lens of a Christian perspective, and both perform their music with a level of melodrama befitting of one of those huge religious events; it's written specifically to be huge, but it ends up feeling somewhat empty in the process.
What's shocking about this one, is how little
Fireworks & Rollerblades actually gives me to talk about. While inoffensive for the most part, this is one of the most bland, white-meat albums I've heard in a minute. Boone's singing is alright, but apart from "Beautiful Things", there's no memorable hooks that stand out even a little bit. It's perfectly listenable as background noise around the house, but it doesn't hold up to stronger scrutiny.
Lyrically, it's your standard dime-a-dozen adult contemporary pop, that ticks all the usual boxes that most albums of this ilk do; that is, except for "Cry", which really comes off as manipulative more so than any other track on here. In that song, Boone chose to take from the Eamon playbook (remember that guy?) and write a nasty, mean-spirited breakup song that has lines such as "I really hate the way you think that you can get away / By blaming all your stupid problems on your mental state", yeah because mental health surely is something you can turn on and off, and it's
her fault for being depressed, right? Geez, dude. Nothing else here feels as mean and insensitive as that, but he sure does leave a rotten taste in my mouth with that perspective on someone's mental health.
As the minutes wore on, this album started feeling more and more just... boring. I'll give Boone points above the likes of Imagine Dragons by way of actually tolerating this guy's voice, but the stuff in between gives me so little to latch onto. He may end up being a one-hit wonder, only remembered for "Beautiful Things", or perhaps he may end up glowing up in a way similar to what Rebecca Black ended up doing eventually; only time will tell. For now though, I'll stick with the one song and leave the rest of this milquetoast project behind, hoping that one day, he'll figure it out. It's not the worst thing ever, but it's nothing special.