"Beautiful Soul" (Jesse McCartney)
I don't want another pretty face. The blond swoop of hair, the earnest guitar-pop chorus, the song scrawled on a million middle-school binders — Jesse McCartney's debut single was the official crush anthem of 2005.
"Beautiful Soul" was released on September 14, 2004, as Jesse McCartney's debut single on Hollywood Records — the title track of his first album. Written by Adam Watts and Andy Dodd, and produced by the pair with Greg Wells, it was teen-pop engineered to a purpose: a promise-song about wanting the person, not the pretty face, sung by a teenage heartthrob with the exact haircut the moment demanded. The Marc Webb–directed video sealed the deal for an audience that watched it on repeat.
The song climbed to number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went to number one in Australia, but chart positions undersell what it actually was: a middle-school phenomenon. It went 3× Platinum in the United States — three million copies in the era of the 99-cent download and the ringtone — and stood as McCartney's biggest hit until "Leavin'" cracked the top ten in 2008. For a couple of years his face was wallpaper across the tween-media universe, and 'Beautiful Soul' was the sound of every school-dance slow-ish song and every burned mix CD with a heart drawn on it.
It's a perfectly preserved time capsule now: the swooping side bangs, the acoustic-but-produced guitar shimmer, the sincerity played completely straight. Plenty of 2000s pop asks to be remembered ironically. 'Beautiful Soul' gets remembered the way it was received the first time — with hands over hearts.
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