I didn’t pay much attention to Charlie Puth; his fans giving him way too much credit for having perfect pitch and producing his own songs turned me off. But he delivered a smart excellent rendition of the U.S. national anthem at Super Bowl LX and I watched his delightful interview with Rick Beato nerding out on chords, harmony, and production with some scintillating piano. He has the impressive knack of playing every song they talk about from memory in the right key and tempo, such that Rick Beato’s great video editor could mix in audio of the actual song each time. Listening to him play piano live along with his own tracks brings out his inventive jazz chord changes. It’s a fun, interesting interview.
So I listened to Charlie Puth’s new album Whatever’s Clever! with high hopes. Alas, its sound sucks. Everything is flat with minimal dynamics, the background vocals and vocal stylings aren’t in the background, instrument solos slouch in instead of leaping out of your speakers (the not-a-Bruce-Hornsby piano solo on “Changes” is disgustingly low in the mix), and it manages to blow Michael McDonald’s first verse on “Love in Exile”. It’s quite terrible, though the worse your playback system is the less offensive it sounds, and the later quieter songs like “Home” suck less. Charlie Puth and producer BloodPop (sic) took a fond homage to 1980s yacht rock/soft rock, and threw a dynamic-range-destroying lead blanket over it.
At 24:40 Charlie Puth explains: “But we really wanted to make a mix that purposely felt slammed, that still felt dynamic, like very compressed, sounds very loud. When you press play, it’s like whoa. There’s no there’s no room to breathe.” Well, mission accomplished 😕.
At 25:06 “I wanted it to feel uh like a like a cassette deck, like a like a BMW in a hot summer day and you can smell the leather” I’ve listened to 1980s cassettes in a BMW while smelling the leather, and most sounded far, FAR better than this. 40 years later, what the hell?! This is not grumpy old person Get off my lawn today’s music is cRAP whining. I listened to Whatever’s Clever! in between Willow’s new petal rock black (it’s no Empathogen , but what is?) and Haitus Kaiyote’s interesting Love Heart Cheat Code . They’re 2020s record production that sound so much better!
