By Marisa Dawson

Benson Boone brought plenty of fire, both literal and figurative, to the CHI Health Center Omaha on Tuesday, September 1, combining high-energy pop performances, acrobatics, elaborate production and heartfelt moments with fans during his Wanted Man Tour stop in Omaha.

The concert, which featured singer-songwriter Luna Li as the opening act, gave fans a little bit of everything across a 20-song setlist. Boone moved constantly throughout the performance, covering the stage and catwalk while encouraging the crowd to sing, clap, jump and repeat phrases back to him.

The audience itself reflected Boone’s broad appeal, with families and fans of all ages filling the arena.

From the opening notes of “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else” through the night’s closing performance of “Beautiful Things,” the show shifted between energetic pop-rock numbers and more intimate, emotional songs. Boone also took several opportunities to sit at the piano, showing off the vocal range and musicianship that helped propel him from a rising social media performer to an international pop star.

The production was every bit as ambitious as the performance.

The stage featured multiple trap doors, an expansive catwalk, dramatic lighting, pyrotechnics, confetti cannons and acrobatics. Boone incorporated flips into the performance without ever missing a beat, a signature element of his live shows. 

One of the night’s more unexpected visual moments came during “In the Stars,” when Boone appeared to fly across the arena while hanging on a chandelier.

During “Young American Heart,” heart-shaped confetti blasted from cannons into the crowd, adding another visual touch to a show that rarely stayed still for long.

But despite the scale of the production, some of the night’s most memorable moments came when Boone simply talked to the people in the arena.

Before performing “My Greatest Fear,” Boone paused to acknowledge just how much the audience means to him. After joking about the heat inside the arena, he turned to a more serious reflection on his career and the relationship between an artist and the people who listen to his music.

“I love this job more than anything,” Boone told the crowd. “I love this job very much. I love what I do. It does not feel like a job.”

He said that when he looks out into an audience, he notices the people who have chosen to spend their time watching him perform.

“When I’m up here, when I’m smiling and when I’m looking out at you guys, I’m observing you and I’m watching you because I love that you have just shown up for me,” he said. “I love it. I’m really grateful for you guys.”

Boone then explained how the meaning of “My Greatest Fear” has changed for him since he originally wrote it.

“When I write my music and we take it on the road a lot of times when we sing this song so many times and the meaning sometimes starts to change for me,” he said.

“When I wrote it, I thought about the one person that I wrote it about,” Boone continued. “The one person that made me feel a certain type of way.”

But years of performing the song have given it a different meaning.

“And over the years of performing this song, it is much less about one person and it is about a group of people,” he said. “It is about you.”

Boone acknowledged that many of the people who support him are strangers he may never personally meet.

“There are hundreds and thousands of people that show up for me every day that I will never get to meet,” he said. “But given that you are still here to watch me and I am here to play for you,” he continued. “So we are here for each other.”

That realization led directly into the song’s title.

“And again, when I wrote this song, know my greatest fear was losing a person,” Boone said. “But now my greatest fear is losing you.”

The performance of “My Greatest Fear” became one of the show’s more intimate moments, contrasting with the spectacle surrounding much of the evening.

That contrast was a recurring theme throughout the concert.

Boone could go from sitting at a piano and delivering an emotional vocal performance to racing down the catwalk, jumping and flipping across the stage moments later. The set moved through songs including “Slow It Down,” “Mystical Magical,” “Pretty Slowly,” “In the Stars,” “Take Me Home,” “Young American Heart,” “Momma Song,” “Before You,” “The Time of My Life,” “I Wanna Be the One You Call,” “What Was” and “Cry.”

During “Mystical Magical,” Boone let the Omaha crowd take over the song, having the arena sing on its own before joining back in.

The show eventually built toward “Beautiful Things,” the song that transformed Boone from a rapidly rising artist into a global star.

The song became a massive international hit after its release in 2024, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and helping Boone earn a GRAMMY nomination for Best New Artist.

By the time Boone reached the final song of the night, the audience had spent nearly the entire performance singing along, responding to his cues and following him through the many twists and turns of the production.

For an artist whose career has risen remarkably quickly, Boone’s Omaha performance demonstrated that the connection with his audience remains at the center of the spectacle.

The production may have included chandeliers, trap doors, pyrotechnics, confetti and acrobatics, but Boone repeatedly returned to the same message: He knows the people in the seats are the reason he gets to stand on the stage in the first place.

As he told the Omaha crowd before “My Greatest Fear,” “So we are here for each other.”