Puther Summit with Larry Fitzmaurice

Fran Magazine: Issue #174

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Whatever’s clever

I sometimes wonder what it was specifically that led Taylor Swift and Matty Healy to “declare” (?) Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist, but in my heart, I know it’s a shared love of Puth’s 2018 album Voicenotes. The singer and producer’s sophomore album is one of the most enjoyable pop records of the last decade. Here’s what’s even crazier: kind of a lot of Charlie Puth’s music is good. He’s probably about as big artist as he should be — but it always feels like he’s never quite getting his due. When I saw him perform at the Blue Note last summer, I was amazed at the sheer levels of age diversity in the audience. There’s something there for everyone when it comes to Puth.

I share my Puther thoughts with very few people — most of my more musically-inclined friends and loved ones finding him cringe or annoying; he’s both, but that’s besides the point. Throughout the years, one of my most solid and committed Puth allies online is the writer and music critic Larry Fitzmaurice, whose taste I respect more than just about anyone. His music newsletter Last Donut of the Night is a must-read (he’s also got great opinions on film), and when Mr. Puth is back in the news, I’m always curious to know what Larry thinks. I asked Larry if he’d join me for a discussion of Puth’s latest album Whatever’s Clever, our lingering adoration of Voicenotes, and how a guy who once admitted to saying he’s “hungies” (at least briefly) won us over.

Hi Larry. I’m returning from a weekend in New Jersey, where Charlie Puth announced “there’s nothing fun to do” in his new album. Has Charlie Puth been to the Mitsuwa in Edgewater? I think he’d like it. I listened to Whatever’s Clever on the sunny Friday it came out, and I’m inclined to think there’s about half of a really good record in there. Maybe even two-thirds, as the weather warms. How is Puth’s latest sitting with you?

First off, as a former Jersey denizen, I cannot help but sympathize with our man’s generally expressed sentiment — although if he does find himself at the Mitsuwa (the takoyaki stand is goated), I should hope that he’ll continue down River Road for a relaxing excursion at Sojo Spa Club, (“My Weekend as a 28-Year-Old In Chicago TikTok” voice) which I highly recommend.

I completely agree that Whatever’s Clever is the latest almost-there album in an increasingly almost-there discography, in the tracklists of which we are starting to gain full awareness of “The Charlie Puth Problem.” A friend who works in A&R recently and very accurately described Puth as a prodigious mimic — the Ditto in pop’s Pokopia, if you will — whose ability to replicate lesser-fashionable corners of pop music’s prior half-century rivals the technically flawless, slightly antiseptic capabilities of a high-grade 3D printer. He can do anything at this point, and as a result he does — but should he?

Barring the occasional lapse in taste, which has become commonplace for Puth albums (the Jeff Goldblum-featuring “Until It Happens to You” is the kind of evil that fire can’t kill), I find myself increasingly hoping for him to lock in on one sound across an entire album, similar to how he did on the sensual R&B of Voicenotes. Instead, we get a little R&B, a dose or two of velvety yacht rock, some splashy uplift in the key of White Boy of The Year Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Phil Collins — he even gives us some straight-up goddamn J-Pop on the Hikaru Utada-featuring “Home.” (Puth’s recent mis-labeling of Utada as “city pop” caused something of an incidence of cringe in my corner of Twitter—but we’ll be revisiting the topic of “cringe” in a moment or two, I’m sure.)

Very little here sounds bad, and as you said, most of it is sounding good as the temperature rises; but I still can’t shake the feeling that Puth is someone whose desire to play with the toys in his box, as impressive as those toys are, ultimately hinders his ability to deliver a true stunner of an album.

Fran, I am extremely interested as to what led to your current card-carrying status as a Puther, beyond your initial encounters with Voicenotes. I ask because his A&R hit job of a debut Nine Track Mind, which compiles the 2010s’ worst pop trends and promptly attempts to beat our unlikely hero to death with them, was enough to scare away plenty from further paying him proper consideration. He is an extremely specific concern at this point; I improbably know more than a few Puthers across several social circles, but very curiously none of them are music critics, who have largely professed ignorance to his talents across the last eight years. (To wit: When I pitched a positive-leaning review of Voicenotes to Pitchfork back in the day, I was told that they were running a review the following day—only to be greeted with a writeup of Shawn Mendes’ whatever-you-say self-titled effort in its stead. Rude!!!) What brought you to this pivotal moment in pop-listener history?

Unfortunately, a compilation of “the 2010s’ worst pop trends” is catnip for someone like me, who has both good and bad taste in music. Just about every year, an inexplicably bad song that I hear gets lodged in my nervous system, and that was Puth’s collaboration with Meghan Trainor on the mystifyingly stupid “Marvin Gaye.” I don’t like “Marvin Gaye” at all, and I was already familiar with Trainor enough to dislike her output, but Puth compelled me. The one-two punch of his cameo in the Charli XCX “Boys” video and Voicenotes motivated me enough to invest, and Voicenotes — like CRJ’s Emotion, maybe — has become one of those pitch-perfect albums for the year in which it came out and the mood I was in upon hearing it for the first time.

I don’t like Harry Styles’s new album at all, but I do think it’s his most coherent effort to date. Just about all the songs sound the same, which I think couldn’t always be said previously and is arguably a step in the “right” direction. It also just so happens that they sound like songs I don’t really like the good versions of, let alone his. Voicenotes, as you mentioned, is Puth’s most coherent sound to date, this kind of R&B/pop blend where narratively he reminds me of Billy Joel — a not-especially-hot guy who is horny and embarrassed about it but also soldiering on in a “brave” way.

The difference between someone like Joel and Puth is that Joel is a really committed lyricist, and I think even if you don’t like his music, you can’t deny his storytelling. Puth, on the other hand… for all his vocal and production accomplishments, I feel like he very rarely finds a balance where his lyrics aren’t too stupid such that they detract from a song that sounds good. The aforementioned “New Jersey” on Whatever’s Clever should be funnier, right? More specific? Do you think Puth has ever managed to shine lyrically, on this or past albums?

If consistency has been somewhat of an emerging issue on the Puther frontlines, then the intentionality of humor has been an issue since the beginning. (Since you brought up “Marvin Gaye,” I must point to the painfully forced smooch between Charlie and Meghan at the 2015 AMAs, which still stands as one of the most excruciating 2010s pop cultural documents alongside “Sensual Pantsuit Anthem” and Iggy Azalea’s attempt at freestyling.) I too have thought about Joel frequently while listening to Charlie’s oeuvre, and yet the raconteurish, somewhat winsome approach the former has never quite emerged in the latter’s work.

If anything, the comparison I’d reach for when drawing an analogue to Puth’s lyrical POV would be Bravo-lebrity Craig Conover (blame my recent double-fisting of Summer House and Southern Charm episodes): Slightly annoying, a little douchey, full of unnecessary complaining (“You just want attention,” “How the hell did I get caught up messin’ with these L.A. girls,” the choice “New Jersey” lyric “This barely even counts as a party”), and more often than not walking the line between “endearing” and “pathetic” with an inconsistent gait. His strongest lyrics to date — for me, anyway — are on Voicenotes’ “Boy,” in which he pulls a rare “Inside-out T-shirt ‘Hey Nineteen’” by berating an older paramour for treating him like the 26-year-old he was. “You never took me seriously/ Now what the hell was that about?” he coos in a slight whine, unintentionally giving up the game when it comes to why someone might feel like they’re wasting time in his presence.

That said, Whatever’s Clever does catch Charlie revealing more of his true self than usual, even if the results are a bit uncomfortable to bear witness to. The breezy “Hey Brother,” replete with ‘70s Sesame Street-esque warmth and a typically lovely chorus, is very clearly a missive to Charlie’s less-successful songwriter sibling Stephen, which makes lyrics like “I wish you could see in you what you see in me” sound a little like Jenna Maroney claiming that she could never appear on American Idol because she has perfect pitch.

Then there’s the surprisingly confessional “I Used to Be Cringe,” which reminds me a little of Justin Bieber’s gorgeously sad “Lonely” without any of the stakes and a lot like something Ed Sheeran would cook up (as a not-so-secret Sheerio, I’m fine with this). “I used to lie, say I was taller/ And throw words around like ‘baller’” is a reasonably cute admission of past failings, but given Charlie’s current propensity to name-search on Twitter (one of the only major-minor celebrities who’s still active to such an extent on the platform, mind you), the gesture feels less like a personal exorcism and more like a promise of sorts that more “I’m hungies!”-esque moments are to come.

Let’s get to the heart of the matter, Fran: Why do you think Charlie Puth isn’t a bigger artist? I think the aforementioned personality quirks play a role; he quite simply doesn’t come off well when he’s not behind a keyboard, which only adds to the notion that he’s a man out of time. Can Charlie ever truly ascend the ranks of pop stardom in a landscape that’s more personality-driven (and, of course, less focused on things like “songwriting” and “harmonics”) than it ever has been?

I go back and forth on this question, and if it’s why isn’t Puth a bigger artist or should Puth be a bigger artist. When I think back on those aforementioned Blue Note shows, I think about how comfortable Puth felt seated at a piano with a bunch of non-famous jazz musicians doing seven-minute renditions of his songs. There were a handful of people in the crowd who behaved like they were at MSG — which, why? — but mostly he seemed comfortable and best-suited to a small room, neither overwhelmed nor indulging in that which often makes him so cringe.

I went to the Blue Note show with my beloved coworker Devon, and when I asked her if she wanted to see him at MSG with me in the spring, she was basically like, “we had a great time at Blue Note, but I am not that committed to Puth,” which also hammers home the fact that Puth is maybe just not an arena artist, despite his forthcoming show at Billy Joel’s home. He doesn’t strike me as a compelling arena artist. He just plays the piano really well and maybe asking more from him is misguided. I always saw his immediate refusal, for lack of a better word, to address what Taylor said about him in “Poets Department” as an acknowledgment of relative comfort with where he’s at rather than milking it for all it’s worth.

Beyond that, my years in cultural and entertainment writing have taught me an unglamorous and somewhat unsatisfying truth, which is that when someone isn’t “more famous,” it’s usually because they’re just not that pleasant to work with. I learned late last year that there is old drama between our other fav JADE and Puth, because the latter “behaved weird” towards her. Not a cancellable offense, per se, but not a pleasant one.

I have admittedly (embarrassingly?) never really listened to the music of John Mayer (“guy with guitar” is a hard sell for me), but if I recall, he also fell into this semi-self-aware, petulant, horny type of stereotype. It seems like he eventually fell into a good rhythm touring with The Grateful Dead in a way that keeps him out of people’s hair but still prevalent in the world of live music. I wonder if there’s a role like that for Puth, who has an undeniable talent, but can’t seem to sustain the it factor that drives so many of his peers. What do you think? Charlie Puth — touring pianist?

The John Mayer comparison is something I’ve never considered before, but it adds up: Both are conservatory-school pick-me types with seemingly innate gifts that allow them to occasionally dip in and out of various Black pop styles. (Also, what is “See You Again” if not “Waiting for the World to Change” with Paul Walker as a stand-in for the broken promises of neoliberalism?) In Mayer’s case, the seemingly endless stint with Dead and Co. — his last proper solo album, the shockingly half-decent Sob Rock, was five whole years ago, an eternity by today’s standards — allows someone with a history of racist statements and a seeming predilection for younger women to essentially hide in plain sight, regularly exercising his undeniable talents for a notoriously undiscerning fanbase without having to bear the brunt of the spotlight’s harsh glow.

Short of subbing in for John Oates in his current feud with Daryl Hall, I don’t see the same future for our boy Charlie, who’s currently having enough trouble pushing tickets at the aforementioned MSG show (Floor seats under $200? Have we time-traveled back to the ‘90s?!?) that the truly patient may just end up being able to attend for the cost of chips and a drink. I think Puth’s future (Puth-ture?) might end up resembling something akin to the career of the quite noxious boy-genius-to-the-musical-stars Jacob Collier, another undeniably accomplished musical polymath whose lack of natural star power has held him back from becoming a true household name.

Even as Collier’s accomplishments are somewhat considerable (he really freaked it on SZA’s “Good Days,” for one), his sentient-TED-talk persona had lent itself to a disconcerting virality; perhaps you’ve seen the video of him “improvising” with a live orchestra in San Francisco, which was recently passed around online to much reactive chagrin. But Collier’s whole human-peptides approach to creativity has also gained the approval of blue-check tech types, who doubtlessly also fawned over Puth’s recent decision to become “chief music officer” at the AI-focused music tech company Moises.

“I’ve been using it in my own creative process for years,” he commented when the news was announced last month, and even as the conversation around AI in music remains more complicated than many will acknowledge (throw a stone in the EDM world and you’ll hit plenty of producers who have been using it since time immemorial), the fact remains that he’s taken it upon himself to be a figurative pitchman for a concept with a lower public approval rating than a government agency that kills people. Then again, he’s no stranger to shilling for crap that no one wants but everyone ends up consuming anyway, and perhaps it’ll prove easier than the currently fruitless endeavor of selling himself as an actual star.

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You can read more of Larry’s writing and interviews on Last Donut of the Night. Everyone say “thank you Larry!!” for his amazing commentary and impressive knowledge of Puthdom. Do you guys think I should try to see Charlie Puth at MSG? Sound off below.