With 1.7 million UK sales and 1.6 billion Spotify streams to its name, Benson Boone’s Beautiful Things is one of the defining hits of 2024. Remarkably, it came to life from the very first session its makers had together. Here, co-writer and producer Evan Blair tells a story that begins with a distortion setting on a guitar pedal and takes in shirtless intensity, TikTok and Lana Del Rey...
INTERVIEW: PAUL STOKES
Beautiful Things came from the first time Benson, Jack LaFrantz and I ever wrote together. Benson’s A&R at Warner Chappell, Jeff Sosnow, is a good friend of mine and I’ve been working with him for years on another artist, Nessa Barrett. Jeff was the first guy who ever really took a chance on me before I had any success. He called me and asked, ‘How do you feel about working with Benson?’ I had heard only good things about him. I knew he could sing his ass off and we’d met a few times socially. So, he and Jack came to my studio last fall.
They had these chords and melody for a piano ballad, which ended up being the slow and thoughtful intro of the song. We all knew it was very beautiful, but it caught fire when we started to explore it. I pulled out a guitar connected to my default pedals, which were set to a distorted sound from something I was doing the day before. I didn’t consciously make a choice, but if I had been thinking about it I probably wouldn’t have used that set-up.
I played along using that very distorted guitar sound and Benson’s eyes went really wide. You could tell that it had unlocked something in his brain. From my recollection, Benson’s reaction to it was immediate. I don’t remember what words he started singing, but it might even have been, ‘Please stay’.
He might kill me for saying this, but Benson was screaming the chorus part with his shirt off because it was so intense! He’s got an unbelievable voice and he’s a phenomenally easy vocalist to record. He sounds good straight away, like the words are just rolling out of his soul.
Shortly afterwards, I realised we had written the two parts in two different time signatures – 4/4 and 6/8. That’s a cool idea, but as the producer I had to figure out how to make these two things work together. We ended up being able to bridge them together, but it was very ambitious and probably took a month to finish. We were all passionate about the idea and really wanted to make it work, so we stuck with it. With Beautiful Things, we made just about every wrong choice you could make in terms of the most surefire way to have success, but maybe that’s why it worked out in the end.
One of the key things that helped was shutting out the voice in my head that was saying, “You’re ignoring pop sensibilities…” Turning that part of my brain off was very important, and Benson was instrumental in that because he doesn’t play by those rules.
The song is all about the dynamic. I think the reason it works is because the arrangement allows for patience – it gently guides the listener. If we didn’t give ourselves the full minute or so at the start, I don’t think it would have been as satisfying. It was really interesting finding a way to make a high-energy song that was still tender. It’s hard to do, but I think that combination of a positive message rooted in gratitude, while letting fly on distortion and a big drum sound, is what made it permeate culturally.
When we finished, I did think about how the song doesn’t fit with TikTok or things like that – but when you start to see enough evidence of things that shouldn’t work but do, you realise that we have no idea. That’s a constant battle in my mind.
The only through-line on the big songs I’ve worked on is there was something interesting about them, although on the day we wrote any of them I could not have said they were going to be big hits.
I saw TikTok heating up a few weeks before release and you’re grateful, but you often think, “It’s gonna go downhill from here…” – but on the day of release I knew straight away it would be a hit. I went to watch Benson perform the song for Amazon and was standing next to his publisher who was logged into Spotify For Artists. It had only been out for 10 minutes when we looked, but the streams were just wild. I remember a few weeks later finding out it was No.1 in the UK from Benson’s Instagram when I saw his post with the plaque. That was so meaningful to me because all the music I listened to growing up got big in the UK first.
Then Lana Del Rey did the song with Benson at Hangout Festival in May! That was so cool because Lana is such a hero to me. Just to think she heard the song and thought it was super cool is amazing. We have a mutual friend who told me she truly loves it. However, the crazier thing for me is that Lana also brought out Nessa at the same show to do American Jesus. Lana played two of my songs that night! If she likes my music, I’d love to work with her.
I’ll be writing again with Benson soon; we’re going full steam ahead on his next project. Jack, Benson and I are spending a good portion of the summer together, which I’m super excited about.
You can stand in the shadow of a hit song and be paralysed with fear, but we don’t feel that at all. There’s something about the relationship the three of us have which makes it all feel super easy and light. So we’re still having a good time and not suffering from any sophomore type of thing. I wish everything could be like that...
