My keys TO success

BOONE PIANO BOOST

WHEN you have written a global No1 on an old beloved family piano, you are going to take it around with you.

Benson Boone wrote Beautiful Things on one such musical heirloom after moving to LA.

He explained: “For the first two weeks, I just had a mattress and that piano. I wasn’t sleeping well so I would go downstairs and write.

“I was so grateful for that piano to have something familiar. It’s my grandma’s piano.

Now Benson’s second LP Fireworks & Rollerblades is about to send him into an even higher stratosphere.

“So many songs were written on that piano. It’s definitely the best music I’ve written. It’s also nice to know I have things to release afterwards.”

Beautiful Things went viral in January and eventually topped the charts around the world.

Benson said: “It’s been a whirlwind of events the past two months. Beautiful Things is a song I really believed in, but you can never fully plan out what it’s gonna do. I didn’t know it could do what it’s doing.” The success has got his loved ones fretting: “My mum has been extra worried,” he said.

“We have so many tours coming up and so many crazy things I’ve never done before – and at a scale I’ve never done.”

But Benson himself is so laid back he’s practically horizontal: “I definitely don’t worry. I don’t really know I can’t pinpoint a time that I’ve ever felt anxious.

“I’ve felt it so little I don’t really know when I’m anxious.”

Beautiful Things is about feeling gratitude for life, love and happiness: “Part of being an artist and releasing music is everything you’re gonna write is gonna be personal.

“That’s how you make great music – by unlocking those feelings.

“Everyone has different experiences but we all feel similar emotions.

“It can be a personal song to somebody else who can take it a different way, whether they relate to the lyrics or not.”

Fair to say the world related to him.