Like David Lee Roth’s drum riser leaps or Pete Townshend’s windmill guitar arm swing, Benson Boone‘s backflips are seemingly going to be part of his stage show until his ortho, or insurance company, say otherwise. So it was no surprise that Boone’s acrobatic signature came up not once, but twice on The Tonight Show on Wednesday (June 4).
First, in the cold open, host Jimmy Fallon met Boone backstage and bragged that he can also pull off Benson’s signature trick. “You know, I can actually do a back flip too,” Fallon said. “Yeah, I just kind of jump and turn around all the way in the air. Just kind of always had a knack for it, if that makes sense. Flippity Floppities is what I call them.”
Boone appreciated the gesture, but warned Fallon that he doesn’t have to flip out to impress him, adding that he wouldn’t want the host to hurt himself. Fallon laughed it off and promised it was “very easy” for him, as the camera cut to a stunt double hurling himself backwards into a table covered with snacks and crashing out after zero rotations.
Later in the show, Boone said “there’s no guaranteed flips” when Fallon asked if the iconic move would be part of Boone’s upcoming arena tour. When Fallon wondered if Boone practices and plans out his flips, the singer sighed and said he didn’t, since he’s been doing the trick his whole life. “I’ve been doing them forever,” he said. “Like, if you knew me growing up and you saw a video of me now and you hadn’t seen anything else — if you went to preschool with me and then you just had not heard the name Benson Boone since them — and then you see a video of me doing a backflip, you’d probably be like, ‘He’s still doing this?’”
So, of course, at Fallon’s request, he stepped up onto the host’s desk and pulled off a perfect one to the studio audience’s delight.
The 22-year-old also singer sat on the couch and played a game where he gave one-word reactions to some of high highest highlights from his breakthrough last year. For instance: the Grammys (“whooo!” with crotch grab and a “wow, that’s tight”), Coachella (“crowd”), MTV VMAs (“it was very sparkly”), Eras tour (“whoa!”), Lollapalooza (“I still don’t think I can spell it”) and the American Music Awards (“… moonbeam ice cream…”).
He then joked about trying to gin up some buzz on the internet for “Mystical Magical,” the first single his upcoming sophomore album, American Heart (June 20) by attempting to make the confounding “moonbeam ice cream” lyric a meme. “Nobody knows [what it means], I don’t know,” he said of his hope to spark some interest in the album by teasing the intriguing phrase. “So it went downhill quick. People started doing ‘what is ‘moonbeam ice cream?’… I hate Benson Boone!’” he said, admitting that even with the hate it kind of worked out for him.
Boone returned later in the show to perform the American Heart single “Momma Song” accompanied by a string quartet, crooning the moving ballad on a sundown-colored stage with zero flips. He will play CMAC in Canadaigua, NY on Thursday night (June 5) and New York City’s Governor Ball on Friday (June 6).
Watch Boone on the Tonight Show below.
