As well as being an artist in his own right, Charlie Puth often likes to explain the nuts and bolts of other people’s music – and the way it was created – on his social media channels.
Discussing this side of his career during a recent podcast appearance with Conan O’Brien, Puth drew some interesting production parallels.
He began by breaking down how the ‘pumping’ sound of modern dance music is made using sidechain compression, but pointed out that this is something that’s been used – albeit more subtly – for decades.
“It's just volume down, volume up, volume down, volume up,” Puth explained, before pointing out that a similar ‘pulsing’ effect was achieved on Donna Summer’s I Feel Love back in the ‘70s.
“It wasn't as obvious, though,” he says. “It was more of, like, a really secret engineering trick.”
Puth then moved on to discussing rock music production’s sonic family tree: “When I first heard the Black Album, Metallica, like, Sad But True – the really bright ‘90s large like a motorcycle metal kind of sound – that came from, or might have been inspired by, like Livin’ on a Prayer, Bon Jovi, or like, another Mutt Lange record [Livin’ on a Prayer was actually produced by Bruce Fairbairn] where they were experimenting.”
Continuing down this rabbit hole, Puth took things even further back. “What came before Livin’ On A Prayer?” he wondered. “I'm generalising, [but] like, In The Air Tonight, Phil Collins. Big Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, gated drum sounds. The cool thing about music is that you can trace everything back to something.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Puth reflected on his celebrated performance of the National Anthem at this year’s Super Bowl, noting that it’s an incredibly hard song to sing because it starts at a low register and ends high. “You don’t get a break,” he says.
