Commentary: Everyone is thrown by Benson Boone’s LDS upbringing — including me

Benson Boone is everywhere. Backflipping off of pianos, performing at the Grammys, cosplaying as Freddie Mercury at Coachella. Watching his meteoric rise to fame has been wild for the whole world, but the asterisk of his once-Mormonism is what fascinates me most.

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I feel like I get Benson. His prophet-ish name, the way he speaks, his recent Instagram photos with friends who look like For the Strength of Youth counselors – it all feels familiar to me. It might, in fact, be giving me an overinflated sense of connection to him.

I could have sworn I saw Benson last week at Harmons by the fancy coffee. This is possibly just millennial blindness in which any Generation Z white guy with a ’stache looks exactly like Benson to my eyes. But I’ve also heard he has a house in Lehi and that his manager bought the home next to him because they just love it here. Who’s to say I’m not spotting Benson, when the other day I saw footage of him riding a dune buggy around my old neighborhood?

It’s possible I’m getting caught up in this six-degrees-of-a-celebrity thing because it doesn’t happen to me often. For having rarely listened to Benson’s music on purpose, I’m oddly invested in forming opinions about him.

Primary tuneup

When I first heard the story about how Benson supposedly didn’t know he could sing until a high school battle of the bands, I was not having it. Because to grow up in the church is to be forced to sing every week of your life. Even the most lax members have sat with a group of kids singing “Book of Mormon Stories.” If Benson ever went to church, he has sung, and if you’ve ever heard him sing, you know this guy can sing. Maybe I would have bought it if he was a John Mayer-type of performer, the kind you could imagine toting a guitar to ward prayer in case of gullible women. But no one goes from high school jock to sequins and falsetto overnight.

I was sure this was all public relations until I heard the story from Benson’s own mouth, pre-media training, and it became impossible to argue with a kid that earnest. So now I must wrestle with the reality that either A) Primary songs are so tame they never allowed Benson’s inner Queen to come out, or B) Benson’s midperformance discovery of his vocal talent was an act of God. I’m not sure which is more faith-shaking.

Mr. Nice Guy

Another aspect that fascinates me is Benson’s likability. For however poorly Latter-day Saints are sometimes perceived in pop culture, whether as anti-gay or into swinging and murder cults, at least we usually get the “nice” award.

But in the past few months I’ve seen a few critics trying to make the case that there are actually 10 people who hate Benson. A Pitchfork reviewer suggested Benson’s music was grounds for music, as a concept, being canceled. A highly entertaining piece from The Atlantic puzzled over Benson being a squeaky-clean bro making “glam-rock about being normal, attempting to name what’s not quite right about him.

To me, it seems obvious people resist liking Benson because of his latent Mormonism. This isn’t me saying boo-hoo for my people, it’s just that when Mitt Romney is your poster child, there’s not a lot of underdog energy on your side. Also, we are so boring.

Humans want their Mick Jaggers to be a little bad, or at least to do something worth talking about. Take Harry the child star, or Justin who got famous from YouTube, or Taylor who dated all those boys. All the above have had story arcs in their careers; narratives tailored by their P.R. people to make us judge, gossip, forgive and, one day, root for them again. But Benson, so far, doesn’t have this — despite probably being the only one in this list who could teach a passable Sunday school lesson on redemption.

He’s got a cute normal girlfriend. He has said he doesn’t partake of substances because he has “an addictive personality,” and when asked how he knows this, responded, “Dude, candy.” The most controversial thing Benson has done was the crotch grab (I’m so sorry to type those words) but I think we have all agreed that this was not a dance move but a wedgie pick — the least edgy thing one can do with that region.

‘The Mormon thing’

Benson is Latter-day Saint adjacent (can we just call it “Mormon?” I need the word now more than ever) and so, in the glaring lack of anything resembling edginess, what became his narrative? Backflips.

It delights me to imagine Benson’s P.R. team in those early meetings:

But how will we deal with the Mormon thing?

I’ve got it. We’ll distract them with backflips.

It mostly works, or it did until I saw a TikTok about how even the backflips are somehow Mormon-coded. After sharing the video, I received multiple messages from people grudgingly acknowledging, “Yeah, I can do backflips, too.” (Studies will need to be done.)

Benson cannot run from his Mormonism, but he is doing a marvelous job in the Dan Reynolds school of How to Not Let Mormonism Ruin It. He has stated he’s spiritual but not religious and assured us that while he doesn’t do drugs, he still drinks coffee. All I can do is slow-clap from afar as he threads the needle between appealing to the masses but also not making his parents sad.

I’ve written before about how Mormonism and fame go together like oil and water, but time will tell if Benson is the one to prove me wrong. For now, I’ll be cheering him on from my Utah suburb and enjoying the odd fact that I and the world’s hottest pop star know the words to “I Am a Child of God.”

Rebbie Brassfield is a writer and creative director in the advertising industry. In real life, she’s a mom of two boys living in the suburbs. Online, you can find her overanalyzing media representations of Latter-day Saints on her Instagram account or podcast, “Mormons in Media” and as co-host of a monthly “Mormon Land” bonus podcast on Latter-day Saints in media.

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