When it comes to social media, you can never control the story. Benson Boone learned that lesson the hard way. During his Wednesday night appearance on “The Tonight Show,” the singer told Jimmy Fallon about how his plan to get some social buzz for one of his songs backfired in a major way.
On April 11, Boone posted a TikTok that featured the chorus of his then-upcoming song “Mystical Magical” with the caption “SHOULD I PLAY THIS AT COACHELLA TONIGHT??” That song features Boone singing the phrase “Moonbeam ice cream / Taking off your blue jeans.”
“We were talking a little bit backstage and you said you started — or helped start — a little ‘Who is Benson Boone’ type of deal,” Fallon said.
“That’s the thing. It kind of went really right but really wrong,” Boone explained. “A couple months ago when I first posted the ‘moonbeam ice cream’ — What is ‘moonbeam ice cream’? Nobody knows. I don’t know. And so I was like, maybe it’d be nice to kind of spark some interest. Maybe I hire a couple of people to be like, ‘Yo, what is moonbeam ice cream? Why is this guy singing about moonbeam ice cream? Where did he come up with this?’
“It went downhill quick,” Boone continued. Initially, people did start to post questions about moonbeam ice cream. But then the discourse changed to people posting “I hate Benson Boone!” the singer joked.
If you’re on TikTok, you know the singer is right. A cursory search of the phrase “hate Benson Boone” on TikTok shows multiple videos with hundreds of thousands of likes about the topic.
Since that attempted campaign, the singer has limited his social media usage to what he believes is now a “healthy amount.” “But if I’m being honest, [the campaign] worked pretty well,” Boone added.
So what does “moonbeam ice cream” mean? Basically, nothing. It was the product of Boone and Jack LaFrantz being silly and working through writer’s block.
“We are very unserious when we’re together,” Boone said. “Jack’s sitting there, and we’re just kind of goofing off. And he goes, ‘What if you just did this?’ And it looked like he was going to say something really good. We’d been sitting there for an hour and this is it. And he goes, ‘Moonbeam ice cream, taking of your blue jeans.’” Watch the whole interview (and Boone’s flip off of Fallon’s desk) above.
