Sunday, October 23rd, Charlie Puth kicked off night one of the CHARLIE One Night Only tour to a packed house in his hometown, Red Bank, NJ, at the Count Basie Center for the Arts. The artist came out strong with Charlie Be Quiet! and Light Switch (the TikTok song of the year) for the first two tracks before diving into a plentitude of number one hits.
The New Jersey crowd greeted Charlie with “welcome home” signs from high above the balcony and rapturous applause which never died out. Although it was a rainy night, it didn’t affect the turnout one bit. Interestingly, tied to the Basie’s roots, Charlie participated in a summer youth jazz ensemble as a kid at Count Basie Theatre's Cool School in Red Bank; he was also hired by The Count Basie Theatre to play in a Charlie Brown production at a very young age. So, this was a very heartfelt welcome home.
When Charlie spotted some younger audience members, in fact, he lit up like a kid himself, and asked what grade they were in—adding that when he was in the third grade, he was listening to Limp Bizkit’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, after quipping that it’s a Sunday and they have school tomorrow, but that their parents are really cool to bring them to his show. They may or may not have known that in sixth grade, the artist went door to door selling a self-recorded and produced Christmas album called Have a Very Charlie Christmas, making $600 in sales. That was only just the beginning for where music would take this prodigy, years down the line.
The crowd was a blend of mixed generations from every age. And Charlie performed every song off of CHARLIE, his third studio album (released earlier this month), except When You’re Sad I’m Sad. The set design featured a backsplash of art-canvassed song titles from the album cover—scrawled all across the wall and even on the chalk-graffitied piano (which he said was representative of his scatterbrain). Puth attributed the look to another local stomping ground, The Stone Pony, to loud and distinct cheers of NJ pride; he said he’d like to find a way for his fans to sign the piano along the tour stops but noted that he doesn’t know how that’s logistically possible.
CHARLIE is “the product of two break-ups – one with a longtime business associate, the other with a girlfriend,” according to a recent interview. At last night’s show, he explained that the songwriting process for this album (largely comprised of live recorded segments on TikTok) was a culmination of all of the loneliness/isolation and getting to a point of happiness, past the BS, and that the song No More Drama was the summation of that. The album was a two-year patchwork of making TikToks—driven by real-time audience feedback and appreciation. His fans’ love aside, Puth emphasized that it was the worst time of his life and most personal album to date, as he was simultaneously enduring heartbreak coupled with the pandemic. Being ever-productive, he used that time to write music on TikTok platform, gauging fan-approved songs, essentially creating the album with his fans present, all experiencing the creative process together.
When Charlie introduced the song Smells Like Me, he said that it takes some time to get to a place of happiness and peace; it’s just a matter of getting through the bitterness… which he had; he has gotten to a place where he's found love. This particular sentiment really resonated with me, having gone through my own acrimonious breakup around the same time as Charlie. I loved fully and blindly and thought they were the one, yet it was the worst heart-rending pain I’d ever gone through.
So when Charlie got to That’s Hilarious, a song that helped pull me through a particularly tortured period, I was fighting back a resurfacing pain of my own. And it’s really strange how the song paradoxically sounds happy. In the one interview mentioned, Charlie explained, “I was always so fascinated how Bruce was able on The Rising to combine happy chords, happy sentiment with the dichotomy of what was being sung lyrically — happy and sad at the same time,” he says, adding that “My City of Ruins” helped inspire the chord progression of his first hit, “See You Again.” It comes as no surprise, then, that Charlie and The Boss are friends. While the two have yet to collaborate, they have both performed for the Jersey 4 Jersey concert in 2020 to benefit the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund. Charlie covered Bruce’s “Growin’ Up.”
Although the album is rooted in heartbreak, the concert was bespeckled with happy moments and songs that lift the human spirit, despite grief and heavy burdens that all of us go through at one point or another. Charlie broke out the keytar early on and briefly sang into a talkbox-type-modulator which allowed him to make distorted sounds with his mouth—the same way that New Jersey’s other music legend, Bon Jovi, did for “Livin’ On a Prayer.” Speaking of eighties icons and megastars, it seems as though Charlie was influenced by a lot of 80’s dance pop, infused with r&b and jazz elements. And it’s a symphony of pure ear-joy!
I hate to be that reviewer who compares apples to oranges, of similar sounding artists or songs, but Charlie really blew my mind with how he orchestrated so many great sounds into this album. I heard little nuances of Michael McDonald (whom Charlie openly admitted he was influenced by with his vocal style in the Calvin Harris collab Obsessed), Michael Jackson (PYT era), Tina Turner (in the sort of anthemic, locomotive-intro like she uses in “The Best” for Smells Like Me), Huey Lewis & the News, Al Green, Prince (in the discordant breakdowns/instrument solos), and Phil Collins (whom Charlie mentioned prior to One Call Away, as he was playing with piano sounds/synths—he said it was a song that saved lives, including his!).
Be it heroes of his, or influences, Charlie has no doubt paved a music landscape and has been a prominent force in writing for other musicians as well. When he’s not spending time on TV shows like Songland and NBC’s The Voice, as a guest mentor with Camila Cabello, he’s collaborating with the one of the coaches (John Legend) at the iHeartRadio Music Awards. He helped co-write and produce Justin Bieber and The Kid Laroi’s number one hit song Stay, which has saturated airwaves and broke a ton of records. Charlie performed this single last night at a downtempo, more slowed, acoustic style. Puth’s collaborated with a myriad of other major artists, including BTS’ Jungkook for another super hit, Left and Right. And it was this song performed live which Charlie displayed some music tech and audio engineering prowess—teasing the audience to stereo sound tricks, splitting directionality to different sections of the theater for the choruses. At one point in the set, the mic blew out, and Charlie and the band kept it cool and professional while extending an instrumental part of the song, before a sound tech brought out a new microphone. It makes sense, therefore, that he has a brand partnership with Bose, given all of his technical knowledge.
Equally, a music theory ace and savant (having been introduced to classical music and jazz at an early age), Puth has an uncanny ability to recognize, mimic, or produce sounds from every known source—even inanimate objects! The artist recently showed off this talent with an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where Charlie sings a song with just a mug. Here you can watch the full performance of that show, in which the second song’s transition for Loser is reminiscent of a cool, 80’s vibey tune—almost like The Weeknd had done for “In Your Eyes.” At last night’s show, Charlie professed that songs should come naturally (not as selected hitmakers or chart-toppers) and likened hit songs to lottery tickets, positing that the best medicine/breakthroughs are accidental. “Once in a while,” he says, “you hit the lottery.”
Charlie continues the North American tour tomorrow at the Beacon Theatre, NY, before other US stops and then hitting the world internationally over the next couple of months. Additionally, he’s performing at this year’s Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden on December 9th. The full set list for The Basie can be found on setlist.fm.
EDITOR'S NOTE: On October 24, the Basie announced that Charlie Puth was named the honorary chair of the new 'Forever For Everyone' endowment campaign.
From thebasie.org:
“Charlie Puth has proven to be one of industry’s most consistent hitmakers and sought-after collaborators. Puth has amassed eight multi-platinum singles, four GRAMMY nominations, three Billboard Music Awards, a Critic’s Choice Award, and a Golden Globe nomination. His 2018 GRAMMY-nominated LP, Voicenotes, was RIAA Certified Gold only four days after its release and has logged over 5.6 billion streams worldwide. Puth’s 2020 collaboration with Gabby Barrett on their “I Hope” Remix earned him his fourth top 10 track on the Billboard Hot 100, hit number one on the Billboard “Adult Pop Songs” chart, and won a 2021 Billboard Music Award for “Top Collaboration.” Puth also co-wrote and produced The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber’s record-breaking single, “Stay,” which quickly become one of the biggest songs of 2021 and holds the title for the longest-reigning No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 chart and the first to lead it for double-digits – spending a total of eleven weeks at the top of the chart. Puth [recently] release[d] his highly anticipated third studio album CHARLIE… October 7th via Atlantic Records [of which he is currently touring].”
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