Shane Boose likes girls. A lot.
If that wasn’t evident from the songs he writes about them — sticky pop-rock ruminations on the thrill of the chase and the sting of its aftermath — he seizes the chance to clear up any ambiguity. Asked during a recent interview what, other than music, brings him joy, he named one thing without missing a beat: “Women.”
Young women love Boose, too; at least, they were well-represented in the crowd that gathered to see him perform in Manhattan on a Thursday in late August, the day before the release of his debut album, “I Barely Know Her.”
Boose, who records and performs under the name Sombr, had announced the set on Instagram that morning, drawing hoards of teens and 20-somethings to a barricaded section of Canal Street, two blocks away from his childhood home. A temporary stage had been erected; crew members with lanyards distributed a seemingly bottomless supply of Sombr posters. When Boose appeared onstage in an oversized suit and a ratty ringer tee, the crowd erupted like they had been waiting for him their whole lives. In all likelihood, most had never heard of Sombr before six months ago.
A few days later, Boose, 20, was sipping an iced Americano in the lobby bar of a swanky nearby hotel. He was experiencing “post-concert depression,” as he put the serotonin crash. Still, he looked at ease, slouching with his long, rail-thin limbs draped loosely across the banquette. He bounced between bravado and earnestness in an extended conversation about the unlikely events that led him to this moment. Above all, he expressed appreciation, describing himself as “privileged,” “blessed” and “grateful” — for his parents, his fans, his record label, his newfound fame — more than a dozen times.
Boose’s success is owed to the explosion of his song “Back to Friends” on TikTok this spring. Written and produced solely by Boose and released with little fanfare around last Christmas, it imposes a tidy pop framework — soaring chorus; sweet, stacked background vocals — onto the emotional mess of a fractured situationship. The song is pure pathos, drawing on both the main-character melodrama of Jeff Buckley, whose album “Grace” Boose cites as his all-time favorite, and the anthemic, arena-ready melodies of Oasis.
“Back to Friends” started to gain traction, often providing the soundtrack to mournful videos about breakups, in March. In April, it debuted on the Hot 100, where it has remained. “Undressed,” Boose’s follow-up single with a throwback groove, soon joined it.
Boose has risen alongside Benson Boone, the mustachioed showman behind the hit “Beautiful Things.” Pulled along by Harry Styles’s slipstream, the two artists are forming a class of young stars who marry rock aesthetics with pop positioning — frontmen without bands, who wear flared pants and borrow widely from the history of guitar-based music. (The sonic references for “Undressed” encompass at least 40 years, from the dense harmonies of the Beach Boys to the ultra-compressed vocals of the Strokes.)
The ascent of “Back to Friends” wasn’t the first time TikTok had dramatically accelerated Boose’s career. In 2022, when he was a junior at LaGuardia — the Manhattan performing arts high school whose former students include Timothée Chalamet and Nicki Minaj — he posted a video featuring a song called “Caroline.” Wistful, atmospheric and laden with falsetto, the track bears the influence of Bon Iver, whose 2007 album “For Emma, Forever Ago” Boose was enamored with at the time. Though he now considers it some of his weakest writing (“There’s no story, it’s just sad vibes”), the video racked up likes overnight.
“Pretty much every label was blowing so much smoke up our ass,” Boose recalled of the meetings he and his father subsequently took. “Basically what they do when they’re trying to sign you is make you think you’re the Second Coming.”
Boose ultimately signed with Warner. He told his mother he’d finish high school online (he didn’t) and relocated to Los Angeles, where he wasn’t plunged into the glittery world of show business, but entered a period of slow creative development. He eked out a string of wounded, downtempo singles that eventually shed the folky cocoon of “Caroline” to reveal more muscular contours.
But by the end of last year, Boose felt he was stalling out. He fired his management. He was “falling in with the wrong crowds” and becoming “a loser” — a term he defines, opaquely, as “the person my mom tells me not to become.”
His buoy was Tony Berg, the veteran producer who is now his primary creative collaborator. Berg, who has also worked closely with Michael Penn and Phoebe Bridgers, was the first person Boose’s A&R set him up with after he got to L.A. Though Berg is 50 years his senior, the two of them shared an instant connection — “a bro thing,” according to Boose.
“Our first few sessions didn’t even go well. I was so nervous,” Boose said. “He told my label that I needed vocal lessons, which — untrue.” He cracked a grin and directed an editorial aside to the recorder in front of him: “‘Says with sass.’”
Berg was taken with Boose’s personality, if not, at first, his talent. “I was immediately struck by how cocky he was, how funny he was, but ultimately gentle and sincere,” he recalled in a video interview. “The first thing he said to me in our first meeting was, ‘Sit your bitch ass down,’” he added.
That confidence is a core part of Boose’s appeal. So is his cultivated aura of downtown cool. Even though he now has a Los Angeles ZIP code, his teen years were spent skateboarding in the L.E.S. Coleman Skatepark and “being a bad boy” in Dimes Square — a sliver of a neighborhood near Chinatown that has, since the pandemic, become known as a hotbed of unemployed model types and cultural provocateurs.
The letters “L,” “E” and “S” are tattooed on the knuckles of Boose’s left hand. Songs on his new album include “Canal Street,” an acoustic ballad where he sings in a vaguely Dylan-esque (or Chalamet-as-Dylan-esque) drawl about “the girls with the low-rise jeans,” and “Dime,” an apparent nod to his stomping grounds. It’s easy to imagine the boardroom pitch: Dimes Square cachet, without the reactionary politics.
It also doesn’t hurt that Boose has both the stature and rakish, androgynous good looks of a Balenciaga model. (His precise size has sparked debate among fans. Promotional posters for the album feature a full-length photo of him alongside a measuring stick and a question about the height he’s claimed: “Is he really 6’7”?”)
But the role of the heartthrob comes with growing pains. It has complicated the romantic endeavors that are his main source of creative inspiration and soured his experiences with journalists who only “want to know what celebrities I’m sleeping with,” he said, using a more explicit verb. (Boose has denied a rumored relationship with the singer and social media personality Addison Rae, who starred in the video for his song “12 to 12.”)
Boose is also finding himself a target of vitriol, which clearly weighs on him. “Last weekend, someone tripped me for being Sombr,” he recounted with a hangdog expression. But he recognizes that haters are part of the territory. And while he doesn’t lay claim to any specific musical lineage, overblown headlines asking if Sombr can save rock n’ roll inevitably invite skepticism.
From the stage of his album release show, Boose told the audience he’d seen a photo of a wheat-pasted poster of his album cover defaced with a word bubble reading “Rock is dead and I killed it.” “But I just want to ask, who else has done this, right here in Dimes Square?” he said, a retort to the anonymous vandal.
That “this” was nebulous: Did he mean performing on Canal Street, drawing a crowd on a day’s notice? Or, more broadly, turning a flash of internet attention into a cultural phenomenon? No matter; his fans ate it up. Boose had killed them with confidence.
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