Benson Boone's 'Beautiful Things,' the TikTok hit we just can't quit
The song is many things: comforting, manipulative, cathartic, a little threatening. Most importantly, it is a vessel, which empties out at the chorus to accommodate whatever a listener brings to it.
Today I have a song stuck in my head. Actually it's been in there for weeks, resurfacing, irritating me as much as it gives me pleasure. In truth, only a fragment of Benson Boone's "Beautiful Things" won't let me go: the moment when this TikTok-turned-global-chart-hit takes off like a bottle rocket from the warm grassy field of its strummy beginning and explodes, busting open the heavens as Boone shows off the bare-chested Chris Cornell physique beneath the Noah Kahan Pendleton. "Don't ... take ... these BEAUTIFUL THINGS that I've GOT," Boone wails as the crescendo hits. Seconds before, the song was a warm bed where Boone lay with the girlfriend who'd gained his parents' approval; now the whole room is on fire.
