Beautiful Things, music review

I like occasionally reading reviews by NPR music correspondent Ann Powers, who recently wrote about Beautiful Things. Google it, it’s viral, y’all.

My take on the lyrics and delivery are uniquely my own. And, though, it could be interpreted as male toxicity when he belts out I NEED YOU TO STAY I came away with a different feeling. I find it to be a song about faith and security within a faltering relationship.

Some of this comes from my current insecurities with God, the Church, and my own faith journey.

Powers mentions that Benson Boone is a Mormon, which introduces its own complexities to the modern relationship.

I need to add here that I’m not on Tik Tok or keep up on all things viral. Lately I’ve been too busy to even write the occasional short story, But, last Friday I took a break and caught up on stuff having nothing to do with my writing or backwoods existence. I didn’t know anything about the artist or that he’d been on American Idol. I had never seen his videos. Etc. I was a Benson Boone newbie.

But I have listened to the song now numerous times and it fits with this feeling I’ve been having. That things are getting better, with the caveat that things might get a lot worse. I believe in family and healing and peace. The possibility of hope, though, even as the song alludes to, I may ambush my own happiness by worrying too much. Thus, I’m always trying to write about living in the moment as a way to preach to myself.

Benson Boone is young, handsome, and now famous. He doesn’t have to borrow trouble, but he in the song is honest: he might just lose it all, and is afraid. I suffer in the same way—at any moment I might be blindsided. Come to realize that the things I believe in actually don’t exist. That feeling you get when the song ends in musical chairs and you are left standing or when descending steps in the dark and suddenly the last riser isn’t there, of falling into a void.

On the surface the song is about a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, but for me I went deeper (maybe because I’m 65 and not dating): I thought it was about God.

From Power’s review:

I love "Beautiful Things." I also kind of hate it. It's a song of uplift with a bitter core, one that feels more than a little threatening to the object of Boone's adoration — that girlfriend who is allowed to spend the night in his family home, but who could walk out just as easily, wreck everything, leave him screaming into the void that that explosive chorus opens wide. The song is definitely grounded in contemporary Christian music — something my niece Meghan, my advisor on all things Kahan-adjacent, noticed before I did, texting me that American Idol dropout Boone "kinda sounds like a very talented megachurch singer."

Boone’s optimism is measured

I found my mind, I'm feelin' sane
It's been a while, but I'm finding my faith
If everything's good and it's great
Why do I sit and wait 'til it's gone?
Oh, I'll tell ya, I know I've got enough
I've got peace and I've got love
But I'm up at night thinkin'
I just might lose it all

I totally get this. The four years under Trump were fraught—as well as the nation falling into a worldwide pandemic. It’s hard not to feel post-traumatic stress during this election season. The bits of peace I’ve been able to snatch back might all go away. As I’m clawing myself back to a semblance of faith, I might just lose it all as the singer pleads

Please stay
I want you, I need you, oh God
Don't take
These beautiful things that I've got

Looking forward to my presentation at Calvin University Festival of Faith and Writing, Slow Looking: Freeing the Mind to Observe, I want to dwell in the present, in the moment, in the beauty around me, the cardinal flashing red in the dry branches, the hard buds waiting to open.

             Soon soon caws the crow.