Charlie Puth: "Maybe I’m a control freak – but I really had to let go of this album"

Not everyone can say they’ve gotten a private concert from Stevie Wonder.

“I was going to be performing with him at the American Music Awards, but you never really know with Stevie until the very last minute,” begins Charlie Puth. “And I’m just kind of nodding off and playing Tetris on my phone. And Stevie comes in, someone helps him sit down, and he takes an instrument out of this ‘80s Wall Street-looking briefcase.

“It’s a harmonica. He just starts writing a song for me, in front of me. And I’m trying to get a word in – and I’m almost in tears at this point. It’s hard to put in words how beautiful it was, but he was just there playing for me for 30 minutes. It wasn’t awkward at any time, it was stunning. It was just him and I in this random dressing room. He definitely knew I was there, but I think he was pretending he didn’t.”

It’s the sort of story you’d get from someone with access to the innermost rooms of the industry, delivered with the awe of someone who still can’t quite believe they’re allowed in. That dichotomy could explain why Puth spent much of his career till now figuring himself out. By his own admission, there have been occasions where he’s changed how he looked and sounded to fit expectations.

In fairness, his entry to the music industry was abrupt, going from YouTube to singing the chorus on the mega hit ‘See You Again’. Puth has racked up four Grammy nominations and 35 billion streams thanks to songs like ‘See You Again’, ‘Attention’ and ‘We Don’t Talk Anymore’.

Despite the success, there was a feeling that he wasn’t always making the music he wanted to.

“I mean, I knew even 10 years ago that at some point there would be moments of disappointment, where you suddenly have access to all these great things and you finally get hold of them and they’re not so great,” he says. “It’s like the feeling of going out to a restaurant that was really hard to get into, and you had to really twist a couple arms to get in. You waited months and months, and then you get there and it’s just not that good.”

His wife Brooke (who is expecting their first child at the time of writing) gets much of the credit for his growth. Puth has even dedicated ‘Home,’ a track from his new album Whatever’s Clever!, to her.  The LP itself is audible proof he’s more self-aware and at ease with himself. Look no further than the closing track, ‘I Used To Be Cringe’.

“It’s almost like a musical theatre song, something you’d hear at the end of a Broadway play,” Puth says. “My life is kind of like that, my own Broadway play I get to watch pan out. It’s me reflecting on times where I might not have been fully myself, where I was just trying so hard to fit in, but realising as I matured that I didn’t have to do any of that. All I had to do was focus on the music and be myself.”

That required venturing into unfamiliar territory. Puth has always been a technically gifted songwriter (I’m sure many have seen him exhibit his perfect pitch on a late night talk show). This album pushed him toward subjects that don’t often make it into mainstream pop, like male relationships on ‘Cry’ and ‘Hey Brother’.

“It’s definitely easier writing a song for a romantic interest, which is why there’s so many love songs,” Puth reflects. “I’ve written a good amount of them. But for this album specifically, I wanted to challenge myself and write about things that I haven’t touched upon before, because there’s a lot of it. I’m always exploring, trying to explore musically, and there were a lot of unopened doors.

“You don’t always have to be, for lack of a better term, the brick wall, the strong force. There’s no masculinity points taken away if you’re emotional. People need to hear that sometimes.”

The music matched the authenticity. There are more live instruments this time around – and more importantly – other people playing them. Working with producer BloodPop, and a band anchored by Stanley Randolph (Stevie Wonder’s touring drummer) and Memphis player Pastor Funk, the making of Whatever’s Clever! was the first time Puth relinquished this much control.

The result is a record that breathes. Much warmer and more organic than the hyper-produced pop with which Puth made his name, the album is a tapestry of soul influences, weaving in smooth, piano-glittered grooves, recalling everyone from Al Green to Sade.

“Maybe I’m a control freak,” he admits. “But I really had to let go of this album. The differences in velocity, specifically the drums – it’s what happens when a drummer interprets your music in their own way, and then it inspires you to add an element  you wouldn’t have added without their touch. Different velocities, imperfections that you end up keeping. Part of being a perfectionist is knowing when things need to be imperfect.”

Whatever’s Clever! also boasts an impressive list of features. Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins are in top form on Puth’s love letter to yacht rock, ‘Love In Exile’.

“I don’t think you can make a new-age sounding yacht rock record without having the two gentlemen who pioneered that sound,” he says. “I think they were unsure of how it was going to turn out, because they very rarely write songs without a band in the room. It was just me and my computer, and some synthetic drums and patches I was going to cut up, so we can have a nice loop to write to.

“They were in awe. They were really fascinated by it because they love what they do.”

Jeff Goldblum is another name on the tracklist that stands out. The actor contributes some wholesome spoken-word life advice on ‘Until It Happens To You’.

“He’s an accomplished jazz pianist and I played with his band at the Troubadour,” Puth says. “We just met through music and ended up making music. I was going to ask Jeff to sing something, but then I heard him speak so passionately about his family and kids, that BloodPop and I decided there didn’t need to be a melody. We just needed spoken word over some broken-down chords, as that’s what felt best on that song. So that was a good lesson to me: sometimes there doesn’t need to be melody.

“Jeff is a very good musician. It’s so fascinating he can be so good at one thing – acting and portraying roles and characters – and then do something that I consider to be the complete opposite. You have to be fully yourself and immerse yourself in music. I guess the two go hand-in-hand, but he does it so well.”

Puth’s upcoming tour has been designed with the intimacy of his album in mind. Inspired by a 16-night residency at the Blue Note in New York and Los Angeles, he’s bringing that romantic scale to Europe, opting for gigs with scenic backdrops like Pompeii and Lake Como. His Iveagh Gardens show in Dublin, meanwhile, will be his first Irish show since 2015.

“It was so cold and the people were so friendly,” Puth recalls. “Mind you, I probably had two songs out and the response was so musical and wonderful, and everybody came out to see us play. I don’t think I was particularly well-seasoned at that point. I had some ways to go musically, but the fans are so supportive there. I haven’t been there in a long time, so I kind of approach this tour with a humble start.”

• Whatever’s Clever! is out on March 27. Charlie Puth plays the Iveagh Gardens, Dublin on July 19.