Benson Boone – The Time Of My Life

Benson Boone Released the Most Personal Song of His Career on His Own 24th Birthday — a Heartbreak Ballad He Calls His Favorite Thing He’s Ever Made

Benson Boone turned 24 on June 25, 2026, and marked the day by releasing what he’s called the favorite piece of work he’s ever made. “The Time of My Life,” out via Warner Records, is his first new music of the year and the most emotionally exposed song of his young career — a slow-building ballad about the strange, hollow feeling of moving forward through life without the person you assumed would be beside you at the end of it. For an artist who became a global phenomenon on the strength of soaring, joyful hits, releasing a song this raw on his own birthday says something about where he is right now: ready to be seen a little more clearly.

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The song is built on a deliberate contrast, and that’s its whole power. It opens almost in a whisper — just an acoustic guitar and Boone’s unmistakable voice, drifting in like a melancholy dream — before climbing toward the kind of staggering, full-throated Wall of Sound he’s become known for: crashing drums, stormy electric guitar, and stacked harmonies. Boone wrote it with his frequent collaborator Jack LaFrantz and producer Jason Evigan, whose résumé includes work with Justin Bieber and Sabrina Carpenter. Critics have noted the track channels the lovelorn spirit of 1950s rock balladry through a thoroughly modern lens, and several have called it his most restrained — and possibly his best — recording yet. The lyrics ache with longing for a former partner (“I wish you came along,” “I can’t let go in my head”), and while Boone hasn’t confirmed the song’s subject, its timing and themes have led many to connect it to his recent, widely discussed breakup.

The accompanying music video, which premiered alongside the single, stages all that internal conflict as a theatrical production. It co-stars Alix Earle — the social-media star and 2026 SI Swimsuit cover model — as Boone’s larger-than-life love interest, the two of them playing out a grand, performed romance that deliberately clashes with the quiet heartbreak at the song’s core. Boone appears visibly haunted by the memory of a past partner even as the staged love story plays out around him. The clip’s release had been building for weeks, fueled by viral teaser clips: Earle lip-syncing the song from a yacht in Monaco, and Boone gleefully recreating that same TikTok, right down to the little black dress she’d worn.

From American Idol to Arenas

Boone’s rise has been one of the fastest in recent pop. Born in Monroe, Washington, on June 25, 2002, he appeared briefly on American Idol in early 2021, left the show, and built a following on TikTok that led to a deal with Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds’s Night Street Records. His 2024 debut album Fireworks & Rollerblades was powered by “Beautiful Things,” which became the most-streamed song in the world in 2024, spent seven weeks atop the Billboard Global 200, joined YouTube’s Billion Views Club, and earned him a Grammy nomination. His 2025 sophomore album American Heart debuted at No. 2 in the US and hit No. 1 in Australia and New Zealand. “The Time of My Life” arrives as the opening statement of his next chapter, landing just before his 35-date Wanted Man arena tour launches July 7, 2026, in Pittsburgh — a run that includes multiple nights at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena. For a 24-year-old who has spent two years as one of pop’s biggest new voices, it’s the sound of an artist trading some of the fireworks for something quieter and more honest.