Charlie Puth may be on to something
Illustration by Zoe Wren Arntsen.
“I heard the song in my head, and I knew it was going to be in F major and I knew that it was going to be like this,” said American singer-songwriter and musician Charlie Puth.
Sitting at a keyboard on The Novo stage along with musical companion of 10 years and R&B legend, James Samuel "Jimmy Jam" Harris III, Puth projected his Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) for the workshop-style session. No, he was not hacking into a computer mainframe. He was engineering a song with contextualized inspiration from “The Breakfast Club” and 1986.
“It gives you a new perspective that you don't typically get on a podcast or on live TV, and it's just something personable to whoever is interviewing him, and then obviously to the audience here,” said attendee Alyssa Hazzan. “I think that's a really great perspective to look at.”
Grammy U is a program housed within the Recording Academy, dedicated to fostering the next generation of music industry creatives. Providing mentorship and networking, Grammy U’s Unwrapped workshop-style events offer an invitation into the room of industry artists and professionals. In the past, having hosted Tate McCrae, Tori Kelly and Offset, attendees were excited to learn about Puth’s musical process.
“I’ve been a member (of Grammy U) for about two years, and it's been a great experience,” said Laila Naji, attendee and aspiring artist manager. “You know, you get access to all these kinds of intimate stuff with artists. It's great to get to know the behind the scenes of artists' music and their life.”
Showcasing his fourth studio album “Whatever’s Clever!” Puth stood before his keyboard as an enlightening figure, a humble perfect-pitch God, for the room full of music industry creatives as he anatomized three songs from his new album, “Changes,” “Cry (feat. Kenny G)” and “Sideways (feat. Coco Jones).”
In live time, Puth started building out “Changes” with a chromatic bass before ad-libbing a lyric, to which he said he’ll figure that out later. He explained the reverse engineering method of what’s in his head in order to find the North Star of his music.
“It's kind of like if you have severe crippling social anxiety, like I do, you try to picture the event or social gathering (before going),” said Puth on visualizing his music. “Like, does anybody relate to this? It's kind of like you can picture the song in your head, but then you're scrolling through Trillian, and then, oh, I like that bass way better than what I was thinking.”
Puth added the synthetic drumkit next before pairing it with something balladly, like Phil Collins. Percussive elements were added onto the screen, resembling the sounds of a basketball against a jungle gym, as Puth said.
With “Cry,” Puth began with a drum loop. While music theory and producing ornaments such as plug-ins like Surf EQ to help duck a little bit of frequency out of 32 hertz, or even pad filters may not be the first thing you think about when hearing a song, Puth’s jargon only reveals his musical dedication.
“If you took it away, the song would have a different feeling from it,” said Jam on the hidden pad in the song. According to Jam, much of the invisibility of music is the psychology and therapy, which adds humanity to the technology.
To add an element he felt was missing, Puth decided he needed saxophonist and composer Kenny G. After tracking down his manager’s number and second home phone number, Puth was able to convince him, which added to the plethora of collaboration between other musicians on the album.
With “Sideways,” Puth took apart the patchwork of sounds, building the vocals around the string orchestral melody, which he learned to do from Elton John.
“I remember Charlie had a melody that was just perfect. I remember I walked in the studio and I'm thinking, man, this sounds perfect. And then Kenny came in, and he started changing little things,” said Jam.
Collaboration allowed the album to flourish and the execution to sing.
“The reason why the album is called ‘Whatever's Clever!’ is because it is a mantra that (Kenny Loggins) and I would say over and over to remind ourselves that it's okay that the snare isn't perfect, or it's kind of like spilling over into like the next measure or what have you,” said Puth. “I know I'm the perfect pitch guy, but sometimes it's nice when things are a little out of tune. The thing I learned the most through collaboration on this album was to kind of let go at times where I needed to let go.”
With competition such as radio and new songs seemingly releasing everyday, Puth stressed to not look at the music industry as an unreachable position. If you do what you love and love what you do, authentically, that’s what matters at the end of the day.
“There wasn’t an attention level of success with this album,” said Puth. “We sold out a stadium tour in Asia off a record that didn’t have commercially successful singles. It didn’t matter because I remember when I was just getting started, ‘Attention’ was the number one record in the country. Success is what you make of it. This album has done so much for me that a lot of albums that had those successful songs didn’t do for me.”
While it may look like the Grand Canyon from where the Grammy U creatives sat before Puth, beginning the launch of their career post-grad or still attending school, Jam said they’re just a few steps away.
“Know your neighbor because you have the ecosystem to make the best music,” said Jam.
Invisible melodies, hidden layers and collaborations across generational talent, Puth’s album, “Whatever’s Clever!” is a reminder to have fun with what you do. Grammy U offered a peek into Puth’s artistic mind and recording process, inspiring a career in the music industry that’s closer in reach.