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Benson Boone's sophomore album, American Heart, is an album that is made purely for radio. 99% of this album is just generic, inoffensive pop songs, with the sole purpose of generating the most amount of money possible. The majority of this album isn't actually that bad. it is absolutely not something i would choose to listen to, but if a song came on the radio i wouldn't bother to skip it, but i wouldn't actively seek it out. None of the songs on this album really stand out to me all that much, at least for good reasons. 'Mr Electric Blue' is probably the only song I would say I explicitly enjoyed listening to on this album, while again i totally wouldn't listen to it on my own accord, it was alright!
What bugs me about this album (and the wider Benson Boone catalogue) is that, Benson seems to be a pretty fantastic musician, his vocal performances are incredibly impressive on this album, and i feel his voice is totally wasted on the music he is putting out.
However, my praise sort of ends here. There is a few songs on this album that I really do not like, Mystical Magical being a stand out one, this is not a good song at ALL and it's popularity bewilders me slightly. It's lyrics feel forced, they are a weak attempt at being 'quirky' and whimsical, they just try far too hard and they fall so flat, the chorus is especially bad, with Benson's falsetto just not fitting the song at all.
Another criticism i have is that a lot of Benson's music lacks originality, and it is painfully obvious him and his songwriters are just trying to rip off a lot of modern pop music, and try to make a sort of mash-up of whats popular, which probably wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't executed so poorly, Mystical Magical is a pretty easy example here, with the beginning verse sounding almost copyright infringing-ly similar to 'Lunch' by Billie Eilish, like it teeters on the edge of just being straight plagiarism and the opening drum beat of Man in Me being pretty much identical to the one on the same song. There's also such blatant copying of Chappell Roan on a lot of this album, (see 'Take Me Home') While he isn't copying a specific song, it's so painfully similar in some aspects, while also being so much worse.
In summary, 'American Heart' is a pretty generic, unoriginal and boring album. It is fine to listen to in passing, for example on the radio, but beyond that, i wouldn't be listening to it.
American Heart - 46/100<
NOT RECOMMENDED!