From making viral songs on YouTube in 2010 to being a 12-time Grammy winner, Charles Otto Puth Jr most commonly known as Charlie Puth is breaking the internet with his new third album, “CHARLIE.” Different from his 2016 debut album, “Nine Track Mind” or his 2018 sophomore album, “Voicenotes,” “CHARLIE” is about the New Jersey singer’s vulnerability as he narrates in twelve songs about the biggest breakup in his life in 2019. In an interview with Apple Music, Charlie Puth stated that the theme of the album is catharsis and how therapeutic finishing the album was.

Growing up with a mother who was a music teacher and learning classical music on the piano at the age of four and possessing a rare musical ability called absolute pitch, Charlie Puth is no stranger to musicality and the power and influence music has on people. As stated above, “CHARLIE” is about finally getting closure from a really bad breakup and thanks to Charlie Puth’s musical background, that message was effectively sent across. “CHARLIE” has twelve tracks with features from artists like South Korean singer Jeon Jung-Kook more commonly known as Jung Kook of the popular K-Pop band, BTS and American Musician and Drummer, Travis Landon Barker of the rock band, Blink-182. The album is also inspired by music icons Bruce Springsteen, The Red-Hot Chili Peppers and The Ying Yang Twins. Charlie designed each song to represent a different time in his life. In “That’s Hilarious,” he uses a beautiful chord regression accompanied by explicit lyrics and a low sine wave bass that gives the song a distorted feeling. In his interview with Apple Music, he said he did that to represent a turbulent time in his life where he was the most uncomfortable, he’d ever been. In “Left and Right,” he took three simple chords, he and Jung Kook’s vocals and put it against a grimy bass which when listened to in spatial audio makes the music move from one ear to another. In “I Don’t Think That I Like Her,” he layered Travis Barker’s drums amongst synthetic drums and then threw his vocals into the mix to convey the message of being in denial. He also adds a key change.

Lyrics are an important aspect of properly telling a message in a song. The lyricality of a song conveys the artist’s overall idea for the album. Charlie Puth is an accredited songwriter who has written songs for many artists like Justin Bieber, The Kid LAROI and so on therefore he understands the importance of lyricality. In “That’s Hilarious,” he utilizes explicit language to emphasize the pain he feels and to set the tone for the album. In “Loser,” he repeats the word “Loser” and the phrase “Lose her.” throughout the song and he uses them as a rhyme to convey how he believes he is a loser for not being with his ex and he also uses to question how it ever happened. In “I Don’t Think That I Like Her,” he says “I don’t think that I like her anymore” repeatedly as if he is trying to convince himself that he’s not into her while he mentions some of the best experiences, he had with her. In “No More Drama,” he writes about how he is finally healing and how after all that he’s finally happy. He ends the album with the words, “I’m better without you, oh alone hmm-hmm” to let all his listeners know that he is ready to move on.

Charlie Puth told his story in the most beautiful and wholesome way he could, and his fans listened. Prior to its official release, Charlie Puth posted several Tik Toks teasing the album, all which went viral and caused six of the songs on the album to go viral upon their individual releases and the album release in whole. From the mind of a child prodigy, “CHARLIE” is as the name implies, a story about Charlie Puth.