MONROE — As an “American Idol” judge in 2021, Katy Perry remarked: “They’re gonna swoon over Benson Boone.”
She was spot on.
Boone, a 2020 graduate of Monroe High School, now has millions of swooners. His shows are already sold out in London and Paris on his world tour that starts in April. It stops in Seattle on May 3 at Showbox SoDo, with only resale tickets available.
He was an 18-year-old heartthrob with a freshly scrubbed look and a dreamy voice when he got the golden ticket to advance to Hollywood on “American Idol” in 2021.
Instead, Boone left the show, stunning his huge fan group of mostly teen girls. He gave up a shot at winning “Idol” to pursue a singing career on his own with his song “Ghost Town” and spent the next three years performing.
Resale tickets for the Seattle show are $178 to $400, plus fees, on Ticketmaster for the “Fireworks and Rollerblades” tour, named after his debut album.
His recent release, “Beautiful Things,” hit No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 in its first week.
He performed the song on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Feb. 1 and attended the Spotify’s 2024 Best New Artist Party at Paramount Studios. He is 21 now, with a mustache, longer hair and earrings. He has 5.3 million TikTok followers, many in their 20s and older.
At the time of “American Idol,” Boone had taken a break after a semester at Brigham Young University-Idaho. His family, where Boone is the middle child of five and the only boy, was in the process of moving from Washington to Utah.
He started a Benson Boone Scholarship Fund with the Monroe Public Schools Foundation.
“Benson loved growing up in Monroe, exploring outdoors, and connecting with friends and neighbors,” his mom, Kerry, wrote in an email to The Daily Herald. “He had amazing teachers and coaches throughout his school experience who encouraged and taught him. He loves staying connected to his roots in Monroe.”
The scholarship is $1,000 annually.
“The kids write their essays. Benson makes time and reads them and considers the applicants thoughtfully,” said Sue Skillen, school foundation director.
Brett de la Fuente is the 2023 recipient of the Benson Boone award.
“It was a true honor. Being a teammate of his as a freshman on the tennis team, and then seeing him accomplish the success that he has after coming from a small town like Monroe keeps pushing me to do the same,” de la Fuente said in an email.
As a Monroe senior, Boone took sixth place in the state as a diver and made the Sports pages. Before that, he was in a 2017 Herald story about his family’s volunteer service.
Boone, interviewed for a Herald story when he was on “American Idol” in 2021, said he didn’t know he could sing until he was a junior in high school when a friend asked him to play piano in a battle of the bands.
“We didn’t have a singer and my friend said I should sing and I was like, ‘Dude, I never sang before,’” he said.
His mom said in 2021: “My husband and I hadn’t heard him sing ever really. He told us he was going to do it and we were like, ‘Oh, OK, alright, this should be interesting.’
“When we went, our jaws dropped,” she added.
After that, he kept singing.
His friends encouraged him to try out for “American Idol,” and he advanced to open call auditions on Zoom.
“It was incredibly nerve-racking,” he told The Herald.
His mom said a teacher once described him as being “his own weather system as he moves from room to room. You can feel that energy.”
Boone did a front flip followed by a backflip as he walked off the stage on “American Idol.”
Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @reporterbrown.
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