Benson Boone finally explained where his viral lyric about “moonbeam ice cream” came from.
“I write pretty much everything [I release], me and this guy Jack [LaFrantz] — and I love Jack, but we are very unserious when we’re together,” the singer, 22, said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday, June 4.
Boone shared that he and his songwriting partner usually “connect so well,” but they were having a particularly “weird” and “whimsical day” while working on his new single “Mystical Magical.”
“As we get on to the session, we kind of came to what’s called writer’s block, and it’s when you have a melody already, but, like, you cannot think of the lyric,” he continued.
The American Idol alum recalled “goofing off” in the studio with LaFrantz, who eventually came up with an idea.
“He just 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. I’m like, ‘This is it!’” Boone said. “And he goes, ‘Moonbeam ice cream / Taking off your blue jeans.’ And I was like, ‘You know what? At this point …’”
The “Beautiful Things” singer told Jimmy Fallon he kept the line, which he admittedly did not understand, as a “placeholder” but ultimately decided to use it in the final cut.
“We went home and listened to it, and I was like, ‘You know what? Moonbeam ice cream — hell, yeah!’” he said.
While the unusual lyric has resulted in Boone being mercilessly trolled on social media, he let slip that ice cream brands are lining up to collaborate with him on a new flavor.
“We’ve got something coming when the album drops,” he teased.
The Grammy nominee’s sophomore record, American Heart, will be released on Friday, June 20.