Music

There are few things more daunting for a rising star than following a breakthrough hit that just won’t stop breaking through. Such is the case for Benson Boone, whose 2024 smash “Beautiful Things” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, ended as the No. 1 song on the year-end Global 200, and, 70 weeks into its Hot 100 run, is still in the chart’s top 10.
But Evan Blair, the song’s co-writer and producer — and a regular collaborator of Boone’s, along with co-writer Jack LaFrantz — says that when the “Beautiful Things” dream team reassembled in the studio, they couldn’t feel the specter of their previous smash hanging over them.

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“I’ve been in situations in the past where [following such a big hit] has sunk us, and we haven’t been able to get out of the shadow,” Blair says. “But for whatever reason, [when we got back together], I don’t think we one time even talked about it.”

It also helps, of course, when you come up with new songs like “Mystical Magical.” Crafted toward the end of the recording sessions for Boone’s upcoming new album American Heart, the sparkling “Mystical Magical” finds Boone leaning into his increasingly fantastical stage persona, with a falsetto-laden chorus, lyrics about “moonbeam ice cream” and chirping synths reminiscent enough of Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” that that song’s scribes were also given writing credits along with Boone, Blair and LaFrantz. (“Damn, it does sound like that,” recalls a laughing Blair of the group’s reaction when the similarity was first pointed out to them.)

The early response to the group’s new effort has been very positive. Despite the refusal of “Beautiful Things” to recede from the Hot 100’s top 10 — and despite the positive momentum behind his prior single “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else,” which has climbed into the chart’s top 30 — “Mystical Magical” became Boone’s fourth song to crack the top 40, and is still hanging around at No. 42, seemingly waiting its turn to officially become Boone’s single of the moment, as he backflips from one high-profile cultural moment to the next.

“I think that is a testament to Benson as an artist — he’s existing in culture in such a way that culture is interacting with him,” Blair says of the way his star collaborator has been able to move on from his breakout hit, even as his breakout hit has refused to move on from him.

Below, Blair talks about his work catching “lightning in a bottle” as Boone’s collaborator, why he never feels like he has to tell Benson no, and what fans might be able to expect from the rest of American Heart, out June 20.

Your relationship with Benson goes back further than “Mystical Magical.” How did you two come into each other’s orbit? 

Benson is with Warner Records, and I’ve done a lot of stuff with them in the past. His A&R Jeff Sosnow has been a big part of my music career — and the first person to ever really give me a shot years ago — and he thought Benson and I would get along really well. He was right: The first session we ever did was “Beautiful Things.”

What was it about the two of you that clicked?

The main thing that drives it is that both of us put a priority on being friends as well as being musical partners. I can definitely take making music very seriously, and Benson… 

Less so? 

Well, Benson can too. But I think there’s something about the two of us — and then the three of us, with Jack [LaFrantz] — there’s an environment of like, “Let’s also have some fun.” Benson is such a musical super force that he’s almost like this lightning in a bottle that I have to try to catch every day in the session. He’ll sit at the piano, or him and I will start creating something that seems to come from nowhere. He’s one of those artists where you don’t know where he’s getting these ideas. It’s like he’s got some sort of channel that [only he’s] getting. It’s my job every day to try to capture it and make it into something that sounds good and can be recorded. 

“Beautiful Things” [is] a great example — with time signature changes and very bizarre arrangements. I get to let him just kind of go wild, and it really tests musical ability and years of production experience to be able to not mess with that, but also to put it in a container and somehow harness it. And for me, it’s the most fun challenge, because he’s just straight inspiration. And I get to play with it.

You said that you guys recorded “Beautiful Things” on the first day that you worked together. Have you been working together regularly since then? 

It’s been pretty consistent since then. I knew from the first time we worked together — and Jack also being a part of that — that there was something really special here. The creation part of it felt very easy, which is not a feeling that comes very frequently. There was just something about the chemistry between the three of us where it seemed pretty clear that we were only at the beginning of something. 

“Beautiful Things” was done at the tail end of his last album, and then there was a break where he went on tour. We were continuing to work together a little bit after that, but he wasn’t really around for a lot of writing until later when we started on this album. We worked together a lot for the last year. 

In what part of the process did “Mystical Magical” come into it?

Towards the end, actually. [At] the beginning of the process, we got a good chunk of the best work. There was so much inspiration, and Benson had such a clear idea of what he wanted to do. And then “Mystical Magical” was kind of the last one that we put in the pile. I don’t remember ever saying, like, “Oh, this has to be a single.” We try not to say that kind of thing — but we all knew it was really great. 

We were in Utah at June Audio [Recording Studios], and at that time, we were supposed to be finishing songs. All of the powers that be were calling me before the session, and they’re like, “You guys got to buckle down and finish these songs.” And I was like, “Don’t worry. We’ll do it.” 

Just the way that the three of us work together — we’re almost always going to try to start something new, even if we are supposed to be doing something else. We’ve had so much luck together that it would be almost stupid not to try. What if the next “Beautiful Things” happens? It feels possible every time we’re together.

I don’t know that it was always apparent that Benson had this kind of flair to him. It seems like, as he’s kind of coming into his own as a performer, the music is starting to match that a little bit better. Could you tell that he had this more fantastical side to him?

Not in such a hyper-specific way where I could be like, “I feel like you’re going to be a little bit more jumpsuit-y on the next album.” But there’s something so alive in him that is very apparent when you meet him, that it doesn’t at all feel surprising when you’re like, “Oh, he wants to do that? He’ll be great at it.”

When [other] artists come to me and they’re like, “I’m going to do this,” you can kind of be like, “I see what you want to do, but maybe we could go somewhere else.” With Benson, he’s so easily able to accomplish things that it felt very natural to me. Even as far down to his piano playing — a lot of the best songs on this album came from him sitting down at the piano, and he would play these little riffs that were like, “Did you just make that? I could have sworn it was, like, a Hall & Oates classic piano [riff].”

What was the first part that poured out of him that ended up becoming “Mystical Magical”?

On that Utah trip, I think we had four days in a row at the studio. The first three, candidly speaking, were not that fruitful. We weren’t finding the answer to some of these songs, and we were having a lot of fun as friends, but we weren’t really getting done what we needed to get done. On the fourth day, perhaps through a bit of frustration, we just said, “You know what? F–k it. Let’s just have some fun and get back to what we do best.” It ended up being the very beginning of “Mystical Magical.”

It started out very differently from how it ended up, but the bass line in it was something I was playing — and it almost felt like a My Morning Jacket song or something. That bass line is now what is in the verse of the song, and it’s a midtempo, funky sort of thing.

We couldn’t really get out of the verse into a chorus that that excited us for a long time, and then Jack and Benson said, “Let’s just try the piano.” Benson starts playing it with these staccato eighth notes high up on the piano. They looked at me, I looked at them, and I said, “When you’re right, you’re right, boys.” We record that plucky piano, and it just made sense all of a sudden. We got Benson in the booth to start singing it, and as he went on, this performance got more whimsical — and I answered that in the production.

A day that started in frustration ended in being one of the best music making days we’ve ever had together. It felt like when that chorus moment happened, it was just unfolding in front of our eyes.

Who came up with “moonbeam ice cream” lyric?

I can’t recall exactly, but I’m going to say Jack. Jack is often coming up with these very bizarre things that you’re like, “Is that a thing? Because if it’s not, it should be.” That happened a number of times on this album.

When you heard that, were you guys just like, “Yes, absolutely, let’s go with that”? 

Absolutely. We all had that moment where we’re like, “Does it make sense? Does it matter?” And you know, to us, it made sense. But I’m also big on letting people decide on their own what it means.

Is it difficult to make headway with a new song when your older song is still percolating the way “Beautiful Things” is?

It can be, but with Benson, no. With Grammys performances and Coachella, he’s carving a lane so effectively that it doesn’t feel like that at all. I tell this to people all the time: [They say,] “Oh, congratulations on ‘Beautiful Things.’ ” And I’m like, “You can have an amazing song that’s going to be a hit — but do you have the artist that can carry it?” Benson carried it and then threw it into the stratosphere like a Hail Mary. Having Benson behind the songs every time feels like you’re doing something new and meaningful. So we’re kind of immune to that so far because of the artist we have. 

I know you say you can’t really talk that much about the rest of American Heart, but do you feel like it comes from the same place as “Mystical Magical”? Or is it a little bit more of a swerve than people realize? 

I wouldn’t say it’s a swerve. “Mystical Magical” is the most mystical and magical song on the album. It is definitely the most of that thing; it’s as far as we go in that direction. My two favorite songs on the album are still yet to come, which is super exciting. But I think in terms of a sonic palette, there’s still a lot of synths, there’s still bold choices. I think people who like the first two [singles] will only love the forthcoming ones even more. There’s some that are a little more emotional, for sure. I’m just super-pumped for people to hear them.

A version of this story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.