Charlie Puth: 2024 Artist Discussion

[SHOOTER]

May 20, 2018 16:29:48 GMT -5 @phillippe said:

Voicenotes enters at #4 Billboard top 200

Don't remember the sales

58k SPS; 39k sales.

[rickroller]

May 21, 2018 8:38:27 GMT -5 @phillippe said:

I hope Done for me enetrs hot 100 this week...album may help

It has already entered.

[Deleted]

May 21, 2018 16:52:53 GMT -5 rickroller said:

May 21, 2018 8:38:27 GMT -5 @phillippe said:

I hope Done for me enetrs hot 100 this week...album may help

It has already entered.

Really? Last week?
I totally did not see it on.

[SHOOTER]

May 22, 2018 3:07:25 GMT -5 @phillippe said:

May 21, 2018 16:52:53 GMT -5 rickroller said:

It has already entered.

Really? Last week?
I totally did not see it on.

It debuted at #74 last week; up to #53 this week.

[Deleted]

Yes, thank you
I checked after I saw the post above

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

Charlie has bleached his hair and it looks like this

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Charlie needs to fire his "stylist" and whoever who thought that this looked good. This look is so tragic. He looks like a Perez Hilton troll doll that was left out in the rain and then put in Men's Wearhouse drag. 

[Agent Yoncé]

'Done For Me' is officially my favorite song from him.

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

He is serving Rentboy realness with this one.

http://instagram.com/p/BkV5pi8Bwu4

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

Now serving passaround party bottom realness

http://instagram.com/p/Bk_IvvshcZu

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

Charlie enjoys removing his shirt during his shows.

http://instagram.com/p/BlI7caXhn-S

http://instagram.com/p/BlI9DOBhcFd

[George]

The video for “The Way I Am” is so good, in terms of showing Puth’s hottness this era:

[Deleted]

Jul 12, 2018 16:28:48 GMT -5 George said:

The video for “The Way I Am” is so good, in terms of showing Puth’s hottness this era:

I just kinda find it ironic that he changed himself for the track with the title The way I am
as I kinda do not see this more sexy image of his as 'him'

I do like it
and I hope it is really his decision to spice it up and be more sexy
but if he was pushed to do it to sell or appeal more ...then...


certainly nothing can be worse than his hair in How long
:)

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

[Ivy Leegue™]

He needs some work if he is going to be shirtless like that on tour. He's not Nick Jonas or Usher or someone like that. He looks like a twink that just started working out.

[George]

How Charlie Puth Fought for the Right to Find His Sound

The pop star compromised himself on his first album. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

By Andy Greene

Charlie Puth had an odd feeling as he read negative reviews of his 2016 debut album, Nine Track Mind: He agreed with them. Despite scoring three radio hits, Puth – a classic-rock fanatic from New Jersey who graduated from the Berklee College of Music – was insecure it had taken an army of songwriters and producers to help him create the LP. He was also petrified that Wiz Khalifa’s 2015 worldwide smash hit “See You Again” from the Furious 7 soundtrack, which Puth sang on, would always define him. “I was worried I would be the ‘See You Again’ boy forever – the boy with the high voice.”

That changed with Puth’s second album, Voice­notes, which he wrote and produced almost entirely himself. The album mixes sleek, Eighties-loving pop with subtle blue-eyed R&B, tied together by Puth’s warm falsetto. This time, the reviews have been great, and the album went gold in four days. Here’s how he pulled it off.

Fight for Control
No record label wants to let its artists self-produce. But Puth gained Atlantic Records’ confidence when he played execs “Attention,” a disco groove about an ex-lover who won’t leave him alone. “When they heard that song they wanted to hear more like it,” he says. “It got them excited.” It hit Number Five, Puth’s highest-charting single as a solo artist. “It gave everybody faith. If a song is mixed right, a smash can become a supersmash.” Then he hit them with “The Way I Am,” a Justin Timberlake-style R&B tune that’s been played over 15 million times on Spotify even though he has yet to officially release it as a single.”It was completely different,” he says. “In my mind, that checks all the boxes of what a hit song could be.”


Record at Home
After the success of his first LP, he decided to set up shop in the studio in his L.A. home. There, he could call the shots himself with a small crew of musicians, and obsessively tweak tracks with ProTools at all hours. “Studio fees would have ruined the album,” he says. “I’d be so neurotic, thinking, ‘I just spent $1,000 and didn’t come up with an idea.’ That’s why I love recording in the house.”

Call Your Heroes
On Puth’s first album he collaborated with the likes of Meghan Trainor and Selena Gomez, but this time around he decided to go a very unconventional route for a young pop star by bringing in artists decades his senior. “If You Leave Me Now” began as a Boyz II Men homage, so Puth sent the group a tape. They returned it the next day, fully overdubbed with their rich harmonies. James Taylor duets with Puth on the social-justice plea “Change.” “I was very nervous when he came into the studio,” says Puth. “But I said, ‘Why don’t you try this melody?’ He’s go, ‘Oh yeah.’ He’s so humble. It was a dream come true.”

Taylor had a good time too: “It was a delight to work with such a gifted fellow musician and I’m so excited to finally see the release of the finished piece,” he wrote recently. “Thanks, Charlie, for making a place for me on your beautiful new album. I can’t wait for people to hear it.”

Be a Music Nerd
Listening to “Sweet Caroline” one day, Puth thought, “Why do people not sing along with instruments anymore? The ‘bum bum bum’ almost feels like a lyric.” He created the jittery riff to the R&B stomper “The Way I Am,” a track that was streamed 16 million times before Puth released it as a single. He has always loved deconstructing the music of his heroes; “I remember listening to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘You’re Missing’ and thinking that I didn’t love the sound of the snare drum. I thought if I produced it the snare drum would sound tighter.” Puth passionately cites Seals & Croft, the Bee Gees, Luther Vandross and other artists from the distant past that few other songwriters his age turn to for inspiration.

Don’t Repeat Yourself
After producing one of the best-reviewed pop albums of the year, Puth is already thinking about how to shake up his next album. “I don’t want it to sound like Voice­notes at all,” he says. “I am thinking about it. But I’m going to keep it in my brain.” He’s also open to working with outside producers. “The only way to grow and become better, and I’m still in the process of becoming better, is to work with people,” he says. “I’m never going to be stingy and pledge only to work with myself. People’s minds are extraordinarily different I wanted to be inspired by different people.”

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

In Flaunt Magazine.





Twenty years ago, a six-year-old Charlie Puth was listening to the Spice Girls hit “Spice Up Your Life” while watching a group of girls from school dance to the anthem in their family living room. “They asked if I’d like to join, and that’s the first time that I knew I wasn’t a dancer. But then I just became enamored with the popularity of the Spice Girls, and I wondered, ‘How could I ever be as popular as them?’” The last decade has likely satiated Puth’s curiosity, with three Grammy nominations for his 2015 mega-hit “See You Again,” close to 5 billion views on YouTube, and prime real estate on global hit charts.

Among a handful of next-generation musicians pumping fresh blood into pop music, Puth is confident, attentive, and candid as we chat at a Brooklyn studio overlooking the Manhattan skyline. His journey to international prominence began just over the Hudson River in New Jersey, the same fertile musical soil that brought us the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, and the Jonas Brothers. Growing up, Puth’s mother, a music teacher, noticed her son had the rare gift of perfect pitch, meaning he could name or sing a note without reference tones. “B flat minor!” he chimes, playfully offering proof after listening for a moment to the background music in the studio. “I don’t know what song it is, but I can see the notes happening in my head.” Having perfect pitch is a nuisance at times—“I could hear the fire drill in the shower this morning: F sharp,” he laughs. It affects his social life as well: “I get really bad socially because when people mention songs, I start to hear the song in my head.” But for a musician who produced his last album himself, an exceptionally refined ear is more gift than curse.



After his commercially successful yet critically divisive first album, Nine Track Mind, the 26-year-old decided to take total control over his second release, Voicenotes, handling lyrics and productionof the complete track list. The album title encapsulates the way compulsive inspiration is captured in the digital age, with an iPhone ready for spur-of-the-moment “voicenote” recordings. For Puth, this means waking up at 2 a.m. to make the kick drum in “How Long” a bit more “punchy.”

The midnight calls seem to be paying off, with fans and critics alike lauding Puth’s honed sound and new direction. Still, he’s his own toughest critic. “I think I suck. I really do. When people say to me that they love my music, and that it’s the best thing they ever heard and they’re so in love with it, I don’t understand it because I find every problem, every issue with every piece of music that I put together,” he confesses. “So I learned to just smile and say, ‘Thank you so much.’ But, I really don’t understand it. I’m a bit of a tortured soul in that way. Nothing that I do will ever be good enough for me.”



Here’s a glimpse of the other side of the irresistible hooks and sleek, danceable production—a sensitive, introspective soul that often mixes heartbreak and a bit of pain into the pop. This aspect of Puth mostly comes through in the lyrics, which thread mournful revelations on unsettled love, regret, and desire alongside the lighthearted sexy fun of a sing-along-in-the-club banger. “I’ll always find a reason to be bummed out about something, but I can create the image of myself that I want to be in my music. If I’m really in a bad mood, I can make a happy song. Performing it will trick my brain. It’s all about writing records and making them sound a certain way. Its just tricking my brain to making me feel an emotion that I want to feel.”

Take for example, album-closer “Through it All,” which finds Puth reminiscing on the troubles that come with an ascent like his: You could say I’ve lived a crazy life for a man so young / The kind that made me question my faith / Now I’m looking back just wondering where the time has gone / But I guess it’s just the price you pay... Or the wistful memory of simpler times and the wince of regret on “L.A. Girls”: Boy, I miss the days we’d take a Greyhound in NYC / Wish I could’ve seen that it was perfect how it was / Listen, I don’t want this to be the way you remember me / ‘Cause I know I was wrong, wrong...


This fluid intertwining of meaning and confession with perfectly crafted pop is what Puth calls “hitting two birds with one stone.” “It’s about suggesting an emotion without really saying it,” he explains—like taking a smiling selfie at the club when you’re heartbroken, pretending you’re having the time of your life when you’re really hoping that one person out there will see it and think of you. “These songs are supposed to outline that juxtaposition with a sad lyric, like in “How Long,” which has the danciest, most up- tempo beat on radio right now.” From teenage covers on YouTube to an online singing competition that captured Ellen DeGeneres’s interest, the internet has been a launch pad for Puth and for many of his peers. It’s also a source of inspiration. His music speaks to young people today in part because he acknowledges the messy digital territory where romance increasingly takes place. The malleability of his lyrics captures that state where smiley emojis, food photos, and selfies have layered, shifting meanings—where interest or affection or jealousy can be disguised in a like or a #TBT, and an unanswered text can portend heartbreak.


On the brink of his biggest North American tour to date, Puth’s career has surpassed his wildest expectations. He couldn’t have guessed, as he imagined, what it might be like to be one of the Spice Girls, or while a jazz major at the Manhattan School of Music, that one day he’d be playing to adoring crowds at Radio City Music Hall and the Greek Theatre. It’s something he thinks about a lot. “I’m a nostalgic person. I’ve walked past my beach club three times yesterday in New Jersey where I used to go on the swing set and listen to Kelly Clarkson and just dream about making records that sounded as big as that. It all comes back to me.” Any advice for those who wish for the same success? “Young artists ask me that all the time. I’m like, ‘Bro, I don’t know. Just be yourself. You already have the advantage ‘cause you’re yourself and there’s no one like you.’ Don’t pretend to be like other people. I’m not going to write about a topic that I’m not going through at the time, because people are smart. They’re going to catch the bullshit.”



If Bieber might come off as a swagged-out egotist, Ed Sheeran a John Doe, and Shawn Mendes a Ken Doll, Puth is none of the above. Earnestly imperfect, constantly questioning, vulnerable and honest, he’s a refreshing tonic to the alpha stylings so often seen in contemporary pop and hip-hop. But what’s his next move? Though he says he “goes with the wind,” he admits wondering about the direction music is heading and how he will fit. But for now, he’s content where he is. “I’m glad I can reach new fans with this new music. This is the music that I really wanted to put out for a long time,” he tells me. “It’s not cheap, or too cheeky or immature sounding. This is truly made for me.” All I can say, even though we’ve known each other for less than an hour, is that Puth needn’t sweat the future. On my way back home, a little buzzed on the M train, I put on “How Long” and let the lyrics chime: Was it real or just for show? A seemingly simple song that speaks to all of it—love in the Instagram age, masked pain, keeping it real in an era of inauthenticity. He’s already one step ahead.





www.flaunt.com/content/charlie-puth

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I'm sorry daddy. I've been very naughty. I need some holy water.

[Ivy Leegue™]

This guy wants SO badly to be taken as a sex symbol LOL.

[Lumi]

Shawn's was better  :kii:

[Ling-Ling]

OMG at those pics. Terrible. He's about as sexy as a cold bowl of oatmeal.

[Deleted]

LMFAO. WHAT is that “sex on a plate” photo? They can’t be serious..

[Ivy Leegue™]

Aug 13, 2018 6:31:33 GMT -5 Ling-Ling said:

OMG at those pics. Terrible. He's about as sexy as a cold bowl of oatmeal.

Right. I wouldn't be so hard on him if he wasn't pushing this preposterous sexy image constantly.

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

Aug 13, 2018 6:31:33 GMT -5 Ling-Ling said:

OMG at those pics. Terrible. He's about as sexy as a cold bowl of oatmeal.

Oatmeal can be pretty sexy if you use it the right way.

[Deleted]

He's trying too hard and it's so far a total misfit
Reminds me of what 1D's Liam was tryna do, except even worse

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

Aug 14, 2018 14:22:53 GMT -5 @mirza said:

He's trying too hard and it's so far a total misfit
Reminds me of what 1D's Liam was tryna do, except even worse

I feel like we are a short time away from either Charlie or Liam doing a fully nude, sexually explicit photoshoot and it ends up being so unsexy because of how desperate it looks.

I could imagine a photo with Charlie sitting totally nude on a La-Z Boy recliner manspreading with a Post-it note on his stomach with a downward pointing arrow and then the caption reads 'LOOK! DICK!' DNW. It would be photographed by Terry Richardson of course. :sip2:

[lynn]

I don't want to spoil anyone's fun, but Charlie's fans are loving his sexy image and he is likely at least in part responding to them. If you watch his very early YT videos, he's pretty self-aware.

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

http://instagram.com/p/BnKYGKxhB7r

[Dammn Baby]

He looks like he watched Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and took it seriously.

[Ivy Leegue™]

Ugh. So gross and unfortunate.

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

That new picture looks like a "before getting ready" one because his hair is clearly not done and he needs to re-arrange some things.

[Deleted]

He can look so good but he has literally 0 sex appeal. All his "sexy" pics just look awkward and kinda cringeworthy.