#cputh

teardrops on my guitar - taylor swift // tears on my piano - charlie puth

dating + charlie puth

playlist // dating + series

Imagine dating Charlie and...

going on tour as his photographer, but also working on a behind-the-scenes style expose sort of book to print along with the photos

stealing his flannels like...all the time

the cool leather of a back seats after shopping all day in the summer heat of rome or paris or...where are we again?

accidentally shoving him out of the tour bus bunk in the middle of the night and trying to apologize profusely even while you’re laughing too hard to breathe

almost nonstop random riff offs

arguing over which equalizer is enhancing the playback quality better

skipping out of the cool after party at that sexy club uptown after ten minutes and half a drink to find some trouble beachside

getting banned from sound check ‘cause ya’ll can’t stop messing around

“Harmonize on this with me? The background on the beat sounds empty...” 

Welcome to my FIRST review on my blog! I’m so proud to finally launch this for me to share my love of music, and gain experience in writing about music that I love. I hope to be able to post at least one review a week.

Give it a like, a share, a repost - whatever you do to share content you love, on whatever social media outlet you prefer. Thanks so much for reading!

Song Review - “Attention”

First off, I love Charlie. I really, really do. If you read my crazy long Tumblr bio, it may make sense why – he has a classic style reminiscent of the Doo-Wop days of old that I love (this is most present in his first EP post-signing with Atlantic, Some Type of Love, that won my heart), mixing it in with his unmatched understanding of contemporary pop music. Seeing that I love him, it’s appropriate for my first review on this brand-spanking-new blog to be of his first release of 2017, Attention (Atlantic Records).

The song itself opens with an unassuming guitar riff that seemed vaguely familiar when I first heard it, so I scrolled through some of his tracks off of Nine Track Mind and found that it reminded me slightly of the opening piano riff in Suffer (again, this is only a vague comparison, they’re obviously different). Following that riff, we hear Puth’s signature falsetto and humming, which pretty much makes its way into almost every song of his. When Puth starts actually singing, we’re hearing, for the most part, his actual voice – much like his normal speaking voice. In many of Puth’s previous tracks, he goes a few octaves higher for significant portions of the songs. This difference is even more noticeable because of how starkly different the foundational beat of the song is, as compared to his other work. His venture into higher octaves is reserved primarily for the track’s hook…more on that later. Additionally, the entire beat is held together solely by Puth’s voice and the repeating guitar riff all the way up until the pre-chorus.

Most Charlie Puth tracks primarily feature a piano, as this is his go-to instrument and specialty. However, this song has what appears to be pretty much NO keyboards! Crazy, I know. If anything, there’s the slightest bit of a keyboard in the pre-chorus, but it’s mainly just to indicate that the song is nearing the chorus, adding an extra layer to the music before stripping most of it in the hook. The notable absence of a piano taking center stage in the song supports my understanding that considering that this is Puth’s first release of 2017, and so many little things are drastically different than his usual style, that he is preparing to enter and experiment with a different side of himself and his music.

Now let’s talk about that great hook – every instrument is stripped out, and all we hear is a bass guitar playing the riff from earlier (just way lower and deeper, obviously) and Charlie singing the hook:

“You just want attention, you don’t want my heart Maybe you just hate the thought of me with someone new Yeah, you just want attention, I knew from the start You’re just making sure I’m never gettin’ over you, oh”

The verses afterwards add a few more beats, more layers to the song, but every time that hook hits – it’s mostly just Puth and that bass. The bridge has a similar stripped down pattern, showcasing only Puth’s voice, but instead of the bass guitar playing the song’s riff, the guitar from the beginning returns. By the end of the song, most every instrumental layer returns to join Puth’s voice in proclaiming how much this ex-girl just wants ATTENTION - and nothing more.

Lastly, there’s a bit of an unexpected break (plus Puth taking a breath/sighing) at the end of the final pre-chorus. Most of us would think it’s there intentionally, but I noticed on the song’s Genius page that Puth had addressed the extra breath and break in the song to Elvis Duran and the Morning show, and I liked his comments on it, so I thought I might as well include it here:

All in all, I really love this song, as it’s a clear departure from the vibe of Nine Track Mind and shows Puth going deeper into the standard pop/dance club-ish genre, leaving his piano behind, and relying more heavily on his vocal abilities and a simple guitar riff to hold the song together. What’s more? You can actually listen to the voice note that Charlie made for himself when he had the idea for this song in Tokyo Japan - it’s at the end of the music video, and it sounds nearly identical to the final product, which is pretty awesome if you ask me, and shows just how insanely talented Charlie Puth is.

Also, a quick tidbit on the cover art: My 5th grade English teacher insisted that books should, in fact, be judged by their covers (”because why the hell would a good book have a crappy cover?”), and I feel that this equally applies to cover art for music…

On that thought, this is notably Charlie Puth’s first release in which the cover art does not feature him in any way. Using a simple sans serif font in all caps kept the message of the song clear yet intriguing, and the change of the “i” to an exclamation point was sneakily creative. Charlie’s fans are surely used to seeing him featured on his music artwork, and the omission of his likeness, as well as the usage of such bold colors (red and black) rather than Puth’s normally neutral, mellow colors (Some Type of Love was very pastel, and Nine Track Mind was a calming yellow, with Puth in an off-green suit) are, again (in my opinion) meant to signal a kind of shift in Puth’s sound, possibly towards an edgier side of Pop that even Puth hasn’t played with yet, but seemed to flirt with very slightly throughout Nine Track Mind.