BENSON BOONE

He's 22 years old. He had the biggest song in the world last year. And the future looks even brighter. Inside the heart and mind of a rising star

-  BRIAN HIATT

When Benson Boone is about to jump out of a helicopter hovering 60 feet above Utah Lake, which is the kind of thing Benson Boone likes to do, a single thought passes through his mulleted, 22-year-old head: This is gonna be sick.

• On clear days, that very body of water, and the white mountains beyond it, are part of the panoramic view from the terrace of Boone’s house, a sharp-angled, industrial-gray luxury fortress with towering windows atop a cliff 30 minutes south of Salt Lake City. “It’s always good to try things in life,” Boone says one early-January afternoon, peering out from the terrace at the distant lake and the endless azure sky, his hands shoved in the pockets of an unseasonably light canvas jacket. Like, adventure-wise. If I can just try everything once, then I'll know what I like and what I don’t like. And I know that I like jumping out of a helicopter.”

• “Beautiful Things,” the song that paid for his house, the most-streamed track in the world last year, the national anthem of baby-and-puppy Instagram Reels, finds Boone singing about an almost existential terror, begging

God not to take away what he loves. But most of the time, he says, “I’m not much of a fearful guy. Like, I don’t worry about many things.”

He doesn’t worry about back-flipping off pianos onstage, even if insurance companies might not love it. He didn’t hesitate to try out for