If you hit all-time low, you uncover its one perk: there’s nothing left to be afraid of. From the vantage level of that valley, life and demise could appear a matter of indifference. It’s with restoration that concern returns. Clawing your means out of the valley teaches you simply how straightforward it’s to slide again in.
“I thank God day-after-day… However I do know the issues He provides me He can take away.”
It’s on this precarious level that Benson Boone’s music, “Lovely Issues,” locations us. This can be the music that skyrocketed Boone to worldwide fame—by some counts it was probably the most performed music of 2024—however it doesn’t inform the story of a hovering star awaiting a crash. Relatively, the music’s protagonist has arisen from all-time low however is terrified he’ll backside out over again.
Boone (together with Evan Blair and Jack Lafrantz, additionally credited with the music) tells this story in phrases which might be plumb easy. You may overhear any of those phrases within the checkout line at Salvation Military:
For some time there, it was tough
However these days, I’ve been doin’ higher
Than the final 4 chilly Decembers
I recall
The protagonist appears to be like again at a four-year tough patch, the “chilly Decembers” suggesting not solely seasonal temperatures however seasonal melancholy and lonely Christmases previous. These years of household estrangement are behind him, since he goes on to say that he sees his “household each month” and has “discovered a woman (his) mother and father love.” No matter this tough patch was, these traces trace that maybe his earlier girlfriend(s) weren’t of a lot assist and his household is relieved he’s lastly relationship a superb affect.
Issues are wanting up, so he responds by thanking God for his new lady. However his prayers are much less motivated by pleasure than concern: “I thank God day-after-day… However I do know the issues He provides me He can take away.”
Themes of religion aren’t international to Boone’s music. One hears of going to church (“Within the Stars”), loving Jesus (“Gradual It Down”), promise rings (“Sugar Candy”), and different such echoes of his upbringing within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However in contrast to these extra generic references to religion, the road that what God provides he can take away alludes particularly to the Ebook of Job.
Job, too, went by a tough patch. After receiving the information that every one of his livestock (some 1,100 sturdy), his servants, and his ten beloved youngsters have been destroyed,
Job arose, and lease his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the bottom, and worshiped, and mentioned, Bare got here I out of my mom’s womb, and bare shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the title of the Lord (Job 1:20–21 KJV).
However in “Lovely Issues,” Job’s phrases aren’t discovered amid the 4 chilly Decembers, however when issues are on the upswing. The protagonist’s state of affairs is much less just like the struggling all through the center of the Ebook of Job than the restoration at its finish, when God restores Job’s fortune (now 2,200 animals) and household (a contemporary set of 10 youngsters). However how does Job really feel when his fortune is restored? Is he overflowing with reduction and elation? Or has his prosperity returned with a brand new aftertaste? Now he is aware of simply how simply God can take what he has given, and that with no discover (Job isn’t supplied a window into God and the Devil’s heavenly face-off). Job has discovered one thing concerning the stunning issues he has regained—simply what ephemeral, precarious issues they are surely.
Boone’s protagonist is a bit much less involved with livestock, as his important squeeze will get prime airtime for what he’s “terrified” of dropping. But it surely’s not simply her he’s fearful about:
I discovered my thoughts, I’m feelin’ sane
It’s been some time, however I’m findin’ my religion
If all the things’s good and it’s nice
Why do I sit and wait ‘til it’s gone?
Alongside renewed concord together with his household, his restoration has restored his psychological well being and religious life. Now he has “peace” and “love.” So when his lady stays the night time and he thinks he “may need all of it,” it’s not merely a press release of her significance. He desires to maintain his stunning lady, but in addition these “stunning issues” like his sanity, household concord, and relationship with the God he prays to.
However he’s afraid. Afraid that if she goes, these stunning issues will observe. That’s why the music’s refrain morphs from pleading together with his girlfriend into praying to God:
Please keep
I need you, I would like you, oh God,
Don’t take
These stunning issues that I’ve received
If God takes what he has given, he’ll lose his lady, his household, his thoughts, even his religion. He’s not so positive he received’t “curse God and die” (Job 2:9).
I didn’t develop up listening to pop music. Publish-classical minimalism? Examine. Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms? In fact. Tuvan throat singing? The soundtrack to my junior 12 months in school. So it would sound odd for me to speak about “discovering” a pop sensation like Benson Boone. However as somebody who doesn’t take heed to the radio and customarily tunes out the background music at Staples, it was certainly a discovery for me in the best way that your good friend found Sigur Ros or AnnenMayKantereit (although maybe a bit much less smugly).
It additionally could also be unsurprising {that a} music about dropping what we love speaks to what Jonathan Haidt calls “the anxious technology.”
It began with asking myself, “I’m wondering what music is widespread proper now?” As I didn’t know, I searched. Spotify answered, “Lovely Issues.” I used to be amazed. This widespread music has some enamel. I used to be moved. You maintain your curly-haired four-year-old, give it a pay attention, and simply see what occurs to your eyes. And I used to be curious. Why is this the music that’s topping the charts? A music concerning the terror of dropping what you’ve received?
Benson Boone struck me as a Gen Z singer with a predominately Gen Z viewers. This instinct was confirmed once I discovered he grew his preliminary following on TikTok. Teen women are a significant demographic at his concert events—no shock there. It additionally could also be unsurprising {that a} music about dropping what we love speaks to what Jonathan Haidt calls “the anxious technology” (with TikTok guilty in Haidt’s view).
Gen Z are additionally positioned at a precarious level. On the one hand, they’re the beneficiaries of an period of relative peace and prosperity. World wars? The Melancholy? Getting drafted? 9/11? Historic historical past. But suburbia is not the bubble it as soon as was.
Rising up with a sensible telephone teaches you that peace and prosperity are quite inconsistently distributed. Alongside curated photos of opulence, you might be greeted day by day by apparitions of famine, abuse, and warfare. The previous a long time have seen the erosion of public discourse, larger suicide charges, and rising mistrust of our public establishments and our neighbors. The faults within the basis laid by earlier generations appear poised to deliver down our academic, governing, and non secular establishments. “Deconstruction” is now a longtime member of the Christian lexicon. Ours is a second low on optimism. Maybe “Lovely Issues” speaks to such a second. A time once we’re “up at night time thinkin’ [we] simply may lose all of it.”
But maybe Boone has not solely touched our second’s fears however tapped into our hopes. An argument might be made that at its roots “Lovely Issues” presupposes each God’s goodness and his sovereignty: each stunning factor is considered one of his items and it’s his enterprise which items we maintain and which we return. Nonetheless, Boone’s music finds no consolation in depicting God as a kindly father who loves to present good items to his youngsters. But on the similar time, Boone’s protagonist nonetheless hopes in opposition to hope: he prays. No matter concepts the music implies about God could also be much less vital than the truth that the core of the music is addressed to God.
Which brings us again to Job. Whereas the start and ending chapters of Job are preacher-approved, many of the e book is a protracted dialog between Job and his less-than-helpful pals (Job 3–37). Job’s place is that he’s righteous—if he may simply get a date on the calendar earlier than God, he could be vindicated. His pals’ place is that Job’s struggling signifies that Job will need to have sinned—God isn’t unjust, is he?
On the finish of the day, Job’s righteousness appears to lie in the truth that he seeks God, even when he hopes in opposition to hope.
When God finally reveals up, he doesn’t reply the perennial questions which preoccupied Job and his pals. As an alternative, he asks if Job was there when he created the world (Job 38) and lists a venerable menagerie of animals (Job 39–41). After this encounter, Job “repent(s) in mud and ashes” (Job 42:6). God then turns his sights on Job’s pals and says He’s indignant with them as a result of—because it’s sometimes translated—“you haven’t spoken of me what is correct, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7 NRSV).
However this assertion poses an interpretive downside. Didn’t Job simply repent for saying issues that he “didn’t perceive” (Job 42:3)? Is Job proper when he calls God “merciless” (Job 30:21) and says God hates him (Job 16:9)? And don’t Job’s pals say some true issues about God, even when they’ve misapplied them? Consequently, some biblical students have noticed that a greater translation could be that God is indignant “as a result of you haven’t spoken to me steadfastly as my servant Job has” (my translation). On this studying, the distinction between Job’s theology and his pals’ has much less to do with its content material than its path. Job’s pals discuss about God. Job talks (complains largely) to God. On the finish of the day, Job’s righteousness appears to lie in the truth that he seeks God, even when he hopes in opposition to hope.
Once I was curious why “Lovely Issues” rose to worldwide fame, it wasn’t simply because the music is a private apocalypse of doom and gloom. I used to be curious due to its path: “I would like you, oh God. Don’t take these stunning issues that I’ve received.”
After a long time of pop anthems telling us we simply want to affix palms, pull collectively, and construct a greater tomorrow, maybe we’re prepared for a brand new hope. A hope that appears not round to humanity’s collective goodness and never inside to our deepest self, however with out. Not hope born from optimism, however desperation. Hoping in opposition to hope that God will present up after 35 chapters of arguing, shut us up, and set the document straight. Hoping we would say with Job, “I’ve heard of thee by the listening to of the ear: however now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:5 KJV). In an period when our prosperity and establishments appear so fragile, my hope is that we would start searching for one thing with extra endurance.
I would like you, oh God.
We’d like you, oh God.
