Songfacts®:

• There are love songs, and then there are love songs that sound like they were written while floating gently down a stream of glitter and marshmallows. Benson Boone's "Mystical Magical" lands squarely in the latter category.
  
  A jangly pop-infused number, the track captures that strange, dizzy feeling of being completely smitten with someone. Boone describes this heady attraction as "so mystical, magical," which is not a phrase you hear in real life very often unless someone is describing a unicorn sighting.
  
  Though he is confronted with "mixed signals" from the object of his affection, Boone is confident she'll come around to him eventually.
• Boone isn't drawing directly from a specific relationship here. Like many artists, he may be pulling from real-life moments, half-memories, or simply that universal ache of wanting someone who might not quite want you back... yet. It's artfully vague in the way many good pop songs are.
• Boone gave "Mystical Magical" its live debut at Coachella on April 11, 2025. His performance was noted for one particularly curious lyric: "moonbeam ice cream." Boone became so enamored with the phrase that he began referring to the track as "the moonbeam ice cream song" in the lead-up to its release a two weeks later.
  
  In a cheeky attempt to manufacture some internet intrigue, Boone hired a few people to pose online as confused fans asking, "What is moonbeam ice cream and why is this guy singing about it?" The plan was to spark curiosity and create buzz.
  
  "It went really right but really wrong," Boone later told The Tonight Show. The online conversation did take off, just not how he'd hoped. "People started doing, like, 'I hate Benson Boone!'" he laughed. Still, Boone shrugged it off. "If I'm being honest... it worked pretty well."
• No one knows what "moonbeam ice cream" means, including Boone himself. "I don't know what it is," he confessed on TikTok, "but it felt right."
  
  And that, in a nutshell, is pop music. A phrase doesn't have to mean anything as long as it captures a vibe. The playful, almost nonsensical lyricism underscores the song's dreamy, escapist quality, describing the surreal feeling of chasing a love that feels both magical and out of reach.
• Boone co-wrote "Mystical Magical" with Jack LaFrantz and producer Evan Blair, the same trio behind his breakout hit "Beautiful Things." They wrote it during a four-day writing stint at June Audio Recording Studios in Utah in June 2024. The original goal was to wrap up unfinished songs, but according to Blair, things didn't exactly go to plan, at least not at first.
  
  "All the powers that be were calling before the session saying, 'You guys have to buckle down and finish these songs,'" Blair told Billboard. "And I was like, 'Don't worry. We'll do it.'"
  
  The first three days, though, were more about hanging out than hitting creative breakthroughs. "Candidly speaking, they weren't that fruitful," Blair admitted. "We were having a lot of fun as friends, but we weren't getting done what we needed to get done."
  
  Then came day four, and with it, a shift in energy. "Out of frustration we just said, 'You know what? F--- it. Let's just have some fun and get back to what we do best.'" That sparked the beginning of "Mystical Magical."
  
  The track started off sounding more like a My Morning Jacket tune, anchored by a funky, midtempo bass line Blair had been playing around with. That riff became the foundation for the verse, but it took a while to crack the chorus until Boone and LaFrantz suggested trying something simple on piano. Boone started tapping out high staccato eighth notes, and suddenly, it clicked.
  
  "They looked at me, I looked at them, and I said, 'When you're right, you're right, boys,'" Blair recalled. "We recorded that plucky piano and it just made sense."
  
  As Boone laid down vocals, the song began to take on a more whimsical, dreamlike tone. Blair responded in kind with production that matched the lightness and charm of Boone's performance.
  
  What started as a slow, frustrating session ended with a kind of magic the trio hadn't expected. "It felt like when that chorus moment happened, it was just unfolding in front of our eyes," Blair said. "It ended up being one of the best music-making days we've ever had together."
• The chorus borrows the melody from Olivia Newton-John's 1981 juggernaut "Physical." As a result, the original writers of that track, Steve Kipner and Terry Shaddick, also earned songwriting credits.
  
  Dua Lipa's 2020 hit of the same name also paid homage to Newton-John's original, proving once and for all that a good pop hook never really dies, it just changes outfits.
• Benson Boone sang this song on the May 3, 2025, episode of Saturday Night Live. He performed it against a backdrop of glowing pink and blue lights.
• Seems like Ben & Jerry's would release a flavor of Moonbeam ice cream, but Boone ended up teaming with Crumbl for a Moonbeam ice cream cookie, a blend of chocolate, cookies & cream, lemon, berry, and marshmallow.
  
  Not surprisingly, TikTok videos started showing up with fans singing "Mystical Magical" in Crumbl and even doing Boone backflips in the stores.