MONROE — Benson Boone will swoon the Swifties.
The 2020 Monroe High School graduate is the opening act for Taylor Swift at the June 23 concert of her mega-successful Eras Tour in London.
“I chose artists whose music I love listening to, and I can’t wait for them to add an extra jolt of excitement to our shows at Wembley Stadium in June,” Swift said in an Instagram post.
Boone, 21, is a burgeoning global pop star in his own right.
He currently is on his sold-out “Fireworks & Rollerblades” world tour, which included an expensive stop in Seattle on May 3 at Showbox SoDo. For the Swift one-night gig, he will already be across the pond, finishing up his European circuit in Italy on June 20, with two weeks off before playing at Lollapalooza in Chicago and then in Australia and New Zealand.
The “Fireworks & Rollerblades” tour is named after his debut album. He told grammy.com it is a metaphor for his life: “I feel like things have taken off for me like a firework tied to a rollerblade, all very quickly.”
Three years ago, Boone was a contestant on “American Idol,” an 18-year-old newbie who scored a “yes” from all three judges, Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan.
On the show, Perry remarked: “They’re gonna swoon over Benson Boone.”
“Benson Ka-boom,” Richie said.
Bryan told him, “You’re not cocky, you’re humble. You’re still in diapers, you’re a toddler when it comes to this world.”
Boone got the golden ticket to advance to Hollywood, but withdrew from the show and gave up a good shot at winning to pursue a singing career on his own with his song “Ghost Town.”
“Ghost Town” has about 375 million streams on Spotify. His recent song “Beautiful Things” has over 800 million.
According to a billboard.com post in April: “Boone’s ‘Beautiful Things’ is the biggest song in the world, as it rebounds for a sixth week at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200. It also holds atop the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart for a seventh total week at the summit.”
In a Daily Herald interview when he was on “American Idol” in 2021, Boone 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.
“When we got to the competition, something in my voice just clicked and I actually sang for the first time in my life and it felt amazing, seeing people cheering,” he said.
At Wembley, he’ll have 90,000 fans cheering.
In high school, he took sixth place in the state as a diver and made the Sports pages. He was in a 2017 Herald story about his family’s volunteer service. The family now lives in Utah.
He started a Benson Boone Scholarship Fund with the Monroe Public Schools Foundation, offering an annual award of $1,000.
“Benson loved growing up in Monroe, exploring outdoors, and connecting with friends and neighbors,” his mom, Kerry, wrote in an email for a March 2024 Herald story. “He had amazing teachers and coaches throughout his school experience who encouraged and taught him. He loves staying connected to his roots in Monroe.”
His fan base is strong in Snohomish County, where news of his Taylor Swift gig created a buzz on social media.
“That is so huge,” said Lindsey Schwartz, a hair stylist and an admin for the “You Had Me at Monroe” Facebook group. “I don’t know him, but I love his music and am so excited for him.”
She likes that he gives back to his community. A client whose hair she’s been cutting since age 2 received a Benson Boone scholarship.
“We have a couple people who have come out of Monroe and hit the big time. Benson seems to be the youngest one who has captured our town,” she said. “We had a woman from Monroe who won an Oscar.”
Blye Pagon Faust, a 1993 graduate of Monroe High School, was a producer on the 2016 Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight.”
Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @reporterbrown.
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