Album Review: Charlie Puth, ‘Whatever’s Clever’

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, singer-songwriter Charlie Puth characterized his career up to this point as “almost a decade of chasing my tail.” Indeed, Puth has at times been dinged for seeming too worried about savvily maintaining his image, whether he’s searching for views by rolling out videos chronicling his writing process or hunting for social media engagement with shirtless pics. That sense of self-consciousness has carried over into perceptions of his undeniably well-crafted pop tunes, which can seem overly considered and even inauthentic at times. But his new Whatever’s Clever is a great reboot, his most personal album delivered with an infectious confidence driven by his preternatural gift as a top-drawer melody junkie.

Puth and co-producer BloodPop indulge their jones for buoyant pop pastiche, and you could never accuse Puth of denying us a window into his true self this time out. He fills the record with accrued wisdom and experience, both musically and emotionally. Album opener “Changes” sets the tone with Charlie singing about piloting life’s inevitable directional shifts over radiant Eighties keyboard, a gospel choir that sounds like it just left the session for Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror,” and a little Bruce Hornsby piano on the bridge. “Beat Yourself Up” imparts similarly earnest thoughts over a sophisti-pop swing that brings to mind Scritti Politti or Swing Out Sister. “You’ve got to feel the joy/And laugh ’til it hurts/And thank god for every day that you’re on this earth,” Charlie sings. On it!

That song shouts out advice from his mom. “Cry,” featuring a sax solo from Kenny G, is dedicated to his dad, who gifted the young Charlie koanic coaching like, “Whatever hurt you come across/You better get up when you fall down.” His brother gets a shout-out on “Hey Brother,” a smooth bit of sibling tenderness that could sidle up alongside Bread and Dan Fogelberg on your sensitive Seventies radio dial. Puth recently got married, and his new love factors heavily here. On the beachy soft-rock slow-dance “Washed Up,” he big-ups his and his wife’s shared goal of making it through any low tides and typhoons that might beset their journey. There are two lovely, Sade-steeped incense-burners about being in a new marriage: “Home,” with a nice vocal assist from singer Hikaru Utada, is an intimate image of domestic bliss, while “Sideways” is about his deep dedication even when things around the house get shouty. Such images of finding solidity in real life contrast sharply with the piano ballad “Don’t Meet Your Heroes,” about one of the ways that becoming famous can wreck the illusions that drove you to make it big in the first place.

Not every one of the retro moves here lands as well as intended. “Love In Exile,” a yacht-rock dollop with Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins, feels like a cute move that’s a few years past its retro sell-by date. “Until It Happens to You,” with an annoying voiceover from Jeff Goldblum, blandly copies Phil Collins’ version of “You Can’t Hurry Love.” He ends the album with a song that’s at once the most meta thing here and the most genuine: the critique-assuming “I Used to Be Cringe.” Accompanied by some dust-in-the-wind acoustic guitar, Charlie looks back to observe, “I used to be cringe/Just so I could have a seat at the table.” This moment of savvy unburdening brings to mind a classic joke from standup comedy legend Mitch Hedberg: “I used to do drugs. I still do. But I used to, too.” Charlie Puth may or may not have transcended his days of cringe. But this record proves if the tunes are bright and tight, it doesn’t really matter that much.