Benson Boone has heard the jokes. He’s aware of the “moonbeam ice cream” ribbing; he knows the world thinks his flips are a gimmick; and as for the claims of being a “one-hit wonder?” He made a shirt. In the music video for “Mr. Electric Blue,” out June 20 off of his new album, American Heart, Boone addresses all the trolling head-on. In the video, a British label executive, played by Boone’s frequent songwriting collaborator, Jack LaFrantz, requests $10 million from Boone because, after the label put money into “moonbeam ice cream and a backflip,” Boone is doing “absolutely horrible.”
So Boone gets down to work to pay his label back, completing various self-referential tasks that allow him to wear increasingly skimpy outfits. He’s selling used jumpsuits with a sign that reads “100% Artificial,” he’s scooping moonbeam ice cream (and licking it seductively), and he’s washing cars half-naked — before one customer turns out to have a “Mustaches Are Lame” bumper sticker. It’s all in service of making sure everybody knows that Benson Boone is aware of his online narrative — over a sprightly rock song.
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The track itself is a toe-tapper that is notably not about Boone’s trolls but does, in fact, bang. The lyrics are in the grand tradition of third-person rock songs about rad folks, like Elton John’s 1974 hit “Bennie and the Jets,” David Bowie’s 1972 ode “Ziggy Stardust,” and the Who’s 1969 song about Tommy, “Pinball Wizard.” Like the musicians before him, Boone finds increasingly ridiculous ways to describe the coolness of his subject: Bennie may have “electric boots” and be “really keen,” but Mr. Electric Blue “fell from space or some supernatural place,” “is sweet enough to put him on your tongue,” and says things like “Watch the way you talk to me
/ If you want to keep your two front teeth.” Haters, back off — Benson Boone knows a guy.
