Benson Boone is living the dream. The singer not only broke records with the best-performing global single of 2024, “Beautiful Things,” but landed a coveted Best New Artist nod at the Grammys this year. Now, he’s gearing up to drop his sophomore album American Heart, and is Rolling Stone’s latest cover star for the Future of Music issue.
Aside from his energetic live performances and falsetto-driven ballads, the artist is known for, well, his perpetual shirtlessness. He made headlines for the low-cut powder-blue jumpsuit he donned during the Grammys and often opts to perform without a shirt, on and off stage.
“I definitely remember there was a time where I would take my shirt off because I didn’t know what else to do,” he admitted to Rolling Stone. “After doing a lot of shows, you start to pick up on what people like and don’t like, what girls like and don’t like. There is an art to making anybody go crazy.…I also don’t want people to come to a show expecting me to just take my shirt off and it to be like a gun show. One, I don’t have the guns for that. Two, that’s just not what I’m about.…I don’t want to rely on my physical form to be the primary driver of my shows.”
Benson’s friend and collaborator, Jack LaFrantz, revealed that the “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else” singer prefers to record music without a shirt on “to get closer to performance mode in the studio.”
“Nothing, even clothing, messing up the vocals,” Jack said before cheekily adding, “I will not confirm or deny whether pants are also on or not.”
Jack, who cowrote Benson’s massive hit “Beautiful Things,” also shared that they tried not to succumb to the pressure of writing a bigger follow-up. “The studio is kind of a sacred spot,” he said of their creative process. “We always kind of want to keep it feeling like that and not change it because of success or anything else. We tried not to overthink it.”
Benson also got into his admiration for Justin Bieber and One Direction, and, yes, he addressed the seemingly never-ending Harry Styles comparisons.
“I don’t want to be the same as Harry Styles and the same as Freddie Mercury and the same as Justin Bieber and the same as One Direction, like, because it’s not me. I’m Benson Boone! I’m completely different,” he shared.
This man’s commitment to penning infectious pop hooks, jumping into Bring It On–level backflips, and leaving his shirt at home will go down in pop culture history, and we stand by that.
