6 minute read
Charlie Puth
STORY: Sadie Bell
PHOTOGRAPHY: Cole Kiburz
LETTERING: Lisa Lok
Nearly every morning of his youth, artist Charlie Puth woke up to the same chirp of a morning dove outside of his suburban bedroom window in Rumson, New Jersey.
“It hit a B flat,” said Puth, “and those morning doves hit B flats everywhere around the world.” Quite literally, Charlie Puth hears the world differently from other people. He has perfect pitch, or the ability to recognize any given note, which is why every time he hears a morning dove, he knows it is singing a B flat; the sounds of his daily life make up their own special symphony.
But in Puth’s case, he also has the ability to produce a perfect note— his keen ear for sound having the capability to hit most any note with ease— and because music speaks to Charlie Puth in such a profound way, he feels it more intensely, too; it paints the color on the canvas of his world. “I don’t even know how to fathom a world without music,” said Puth. It is integral to his life and always has been— for as long as he can remember, he has constantly been thinking in terms of chord progressions and production styles.
He said, “Who I was growing up, was that kid in the basement on synthesizers producing out a record.” And ever since at twelve years old he filled in for his church organ player (knowing all of the songs note for note simply from hearing them time and time again), he has realized that he is special, and now he is taking his gift of perfect pitch far beyond recognizing the pleasant wakeup call on his windowsill.
While his immense talent led to his passion for music, the inspiration to pursue this passion came from the drive he witnessed in his parents. “My parents didn’t have a lot of money right away, but they’ve always had this work drive that I witnessed from an early age on,” he said.
He said, “I think that’s where it all came from— really my parents lit the flame.” And a spark they did ignite in their son, as he would go onto produce and write a number of pop sensations soaring the Hot 100 charts and gain three Grammy nominations for writing the number one single “See You Again”, even prior to the release of his debut album.
“The theme of my musical life this past year and a half so far seems to have been overall unconventional, so I like to continue that in how I create music, too. I don’t write music in a traditional way,” he said. “It just makes it more special.”
The specialness Puth prescribes to his music expands even beyond the way he creates it, be that a song he wrote in ten minutes and recorded on his iPhone, or one he spent days on in the studio. Puth said just as he hears music differently, he feels it differently, too; he constantly considers the way bodies might reaction to a song’s rhythm and thoughtfully integrates compassion into his lyrics, hoping to provide solace and a source of inspiration to his listeners.
His music consists of polished engineering in line with sharp, modern pop sensibility, along with a hint of a sort of retro sweetness, drawing on doo-wop melodies driven by his flirtatious tenor/falsetto and the romantic lyrical content of the fallen teen stars of the nineteen-fifties. But unlike many of those manufactured performers, Puth writes and produces all of his own music. He draws from personal experiences like relationships, loss, and the struggles that he faces as a songwriter to create music in a way that speaks to him as an individual, but resonates universally with the mass of pop music fans.
Puth said that while he feels as if he has to have a personal connection with what he creates, he notes the universality of the human experience. “People are similar. I’m not the only person to have ever felt [what I’ve felt] and I know that maybe if I’m real about my experiences, people can insert their own. I’m really sensitive and like to put my sensitivity and empathy for others in my music,” he said. Like his song “See You Again”, for example, which held the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for twelve weeks. Though the song was about Puth’s personal experience with the loss of his friend, the way he constructed the song’s infectious melody and expansive lyrics allowed for a sort of accessibility that only comes with the knowledge and thoughtfulness of a seasoned pop musician.
While he feels a deep sensitivity in terms of his music, he also feels the hypnotism and melodic pull of sound pulsating throughout his body, as well. “When I’m making a record, I can hear the type of pitch frequency it’s going to reach on the radio, like what the programmers might do to the record, because sometimes on the radio they speed the song up by one percent. So, when I’m producing out a song, I hear the whole thing in my head and the goal is to take everything that I have in my head, out of my head and into ProTools, the computer program that I use to produce music and record. I have it all in my head and then when I hear it out of my brain coming from a different thing, I think of different people reacting to it, like my mom reacting to it when the chorus drops.”
Though Puth is always thinking of his audience’s immediate reaction, he said that overall he hopes that his music is a source of inspiration for his fans. “I want them to feel like they can make their own music,” he said. “Then I can hopefully sign them one day and collaborate with them. I want to inspire them. That’s the thing I want the most.”
As Puth continues to produce new music and set out on tour, it is only inevitable that he continues to greet new accolades and reach new levels of success, but despite these hopeful prospects Puth said, “My hopes for myself going forward is that I don’t become jaded. I don’t want to ever come down on this music industry because it’s done so much for me. He said, “[But] just by saying that, I don’t think I will become jaded. I don’t want to become unappreciative of any accolade that I might reach. I always want to feel hungry and inspired to create new stuff.”
That boy from Rumson, New Jersey has come a long way— his parents inspired him to work hard and his faith in music drove him to create— and now that he’s finally found the success that he always dreamed of, he looks out hopefully at the prospects of his career. While once a little birdie on his windowsill used to be his daily reminder of the power of music in the world, but now his music, fusing through the radio waves, is here to send this reminder out to the masses. Puth said, “A world without music is beyond impossible. I would rather have a world without feeling, like [not] being able to touch a fabric and feel it. I don’t think I would be living if there was any world without music.”
