{"id":2492,"date":"2026-04-22T14:12:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T21:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/?p=2492"},"modified":"2026-07-15T16:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T23:23:10","slug":"music-charlie-puth-deadens-his-talent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/music-charlie-puth-deadens-his-talent\/","title":{"rendered":"music: Charlie Puth deadens his talent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I didn&#8217;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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1MMGgqmD2EQ\">smart excellent rendition of the U.S. national anthem<\/a> 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&#8217;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&#8217;s a fun, interesting interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Charlie Puth Interview\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/M1ynEx-xiN0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I listened to Charlie Puth&#8217;s new album <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Whatever's_Clever!\">Whatever&#8217;s Clever!<\/a><\/em> with high hopes. Alas, its sound <strong>sucks<\/strong>. Everything is flat with minimal dynamics, the background vocals and vocal stylings <em>aren&#8217;t<\/em> in the background, instrument solos slouch in instead of leaping out of your speakers (the not-a-Bruce-Hornsby piano solo on &#8220;Changes&#8221; is disgustingly low in the mix), and it manages to blow Michael McDonald&#8217;s first verse on &#8220;Love in Exile&#8221;. It&#8217;s quite terrible, though the worse your playback system is the less offensive it sounds, and the later quieter songs like &#8220;Home&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At 24:38 Charlie Puth explains: &#8220;But we really wanted to make a mix that purposely felt slammed, that still felt dynamic, &#8230; very compressed, sounds very loud. When you press play, it&#8217;s like whoa. There&#8217;s no room to breathe.&#8221; Well, mission accomplished \ud83d\ude15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At 25:06 &#8220;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&#8221; I&#8217;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 <span style=\"font-family: sans-serif\">Get off my lawn today&#8217;s music is cRAP<\/span> whining. I listened to <em>Whatever&#8217;s Clever!<\/em> in between Willow&#8217;s new <em>petal rock black<\/em> (it&#8217;s no <em>Empathogen<\/em> , but what is?) and Haitus Kaiyote&#8217;s interesting <em>Love Heart Cheat Code<\/em>. They&#8217;re 2020s record production that sound so much better!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/music-charlie-puth-deadens-his-talent\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2492"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2605,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492\/revisions\/2605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}