Charlie Puth Puts His Jazz Chops to Work at His Blue Note Residency Opening in Los Angeles: Concert Review

During the opening performance of his four-night residency at Los Angeles's new Blue Note jazz club, Charlie Puth explained his artistic approach to both the live audience and a global TikTok livestream. He emphasized his goal of presenting songs "just as I first heard them in my head," revealing that his songwriting is fundamentally rooted in jazz. This was demonstrated when he played a sequence of intricate jazz chords on the piano. Puth expressed pride in weaving jazz influences into his pop music, describing the process as "slipping jazz-isms past the audience."

Charlie Puth, whose 2016 debut album "Nine Track Mind" launched a nearly decade-long run of hits, is widely recognized as a pop craftsman responsible for impeccably produced and instantly memorable tracks. His catalog includes the cheeky "Marvin Gaye," the funk-infused "How Long" and "Attention," and the TikTok phenomenon "Light Switch"—a song he constructed in real-time on the platform during the isolating Covid-19 lockdowns. Beneath this polished pop exterior lies a deep understanding of music theory, particularly jazz harmony. His signature is creating deceptively simple songs powered by advanced chord progressions and tonal shifts. While his perfect pitch is often highlighted, it's his masterful use of modulation and harmonic tension that truly defines his sound—a technique many modern producers strive to emulate.

His latest single, "Changes," which premiered yesterday and closed his Blue Note set, continues his tradition of stretching pop conventions. The track draws heavily from 80s icons like Toto, Peter Gabriel, and Phil Collins, updating their classic production styles for a contemporary audience and revealing yet another facet of his musical versatility. The venue itself provided a fittingly intimate setting for this exploration. The Blue Note, whose flagship location opened in New York's Greenwich Village in 1981 and rapidly became a legendary stage for jazz greats like Art Blakey and Sarah Vaughan, offered a stark contrast to the arenas Puth often headlines.

Over a 75-minute first set—one of two shows that evening—Puth peeled back the layers of his hits, transforming them into the jazz-oriented arrangements he had originally envisioned. "Attention" was reworked into a lounge-style piece with a nimble guitar line and a walking bass, culminating in intricate a cappella harmonies from his trio. He seamlessly transitioned his own track "Boy" into an improvised groove inspired by Erykah Badu's "Back in the Day (Puff)," and delivered a raw, personal cover of New Edition's "Can You Stand the Rain," which he praised as "the song every writer wishes they had composed."

Despite being an experienced performer who has sold out Radio City Music Hall and completed a major Asia tour last year, Puth confessed that the club's close quarters made him uncharacteristically nervous. He told the crowd, "I'm not new to this, but I feel new tonight. These are the kinds of intimate stages where I began." Before performing a more harmonically rich version of "Suffer," he shared that the song was written after he first relocated to Los Angeles, in an apartment situated less than a mile from the club. "I always knew a show like this was in my future," he reflected, "it just took a decade to make it happen." This sentiment underscores a significant full-circle moment in his career. According to music critic Anya Sharma, "Puth occupies a rare space where academic music theory and mass-market appeal intersect. His journey demonstrates that sophisticated musicianship can thrive within the pop mainstream." This evolution, from his early 2010 EP "The Otto Tunes" to his current nuanced work, is why a line from Taylor Swift's "The Tortured Poets Department"—"Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist"—resonated so powerfully with fans. While the scale of his performances has grown, his central aim remains unchanged: a relentless pursuit of pop excellence.