Shortly after Charlie Puth took the stage for the first of his four-night residency at Los Angeles’ freshly-opened Blue Note, he shared his intentions with those in attendance and the thousands watching on a TikTok livestream. “We’re going to play these songs in the original way that I concocted them in my head,” he said. “Whenever I write anything, it comes from a jazz perspective, because I love jazz so much.” (He accented those last words with chameleonic jazz chords to drive the point.) “You can only put so much into a pop song, but you can trick the listener into appreciating jazz-isms in your pop music, which is something I’ve always taken pride in doing.”

For the casual listener, Puth has established himself as the sort of outré pop savant whose songs are too meticulously structu

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