The benzamide moiety is among the most common structural fragments in pharmacologically relevant compounds. It is present in a variety of approved and investigational drugs of diverse mechanism of action, including antitumour agents,^1,2  antiemetics,³  antipsychotic drugs and antidepressants,⁴  gastroprokinetic agents,⁵  antiparasitic and antiviral medications,⁶  platelet aggregation inhibitors,⁷  or recently inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 replication⁸  (Fig. 1). Benzamide derivatives have also been utilised as radiotracers for melanoma imaging^9,10  and applied as chromophores for cottonogenic derivatives of amines for stereochemical studies by circular dichroism.¹¹  Such a wide range of application makes late-stage modification of their structure a vibrant area of research, with the potential to provide libraries of derivatives with unique properties.^12,13