Charlie Puth shares more about his church background and its influence on his music

Charlie Puth recently reflected on his appreciation for the Church and its impact on his Grammy-winning music during an appearance on “The Terrell Show,” where he surprised viewers by singing Richard Smallwood’s gospel staple “The Center of My Joy.”

During the interview, the 34-year-old singer sang a portion of the 1980 song, which incorporates the lyrics “Jesus, You’re the middle of my joy/ All that is good and ideal comes from You/ You’re the center of my contentment.”

“Pause. How do you realize that song?” a surprised Terrell asked Puth, who in response, walked through its chord progressions and shared his appreciation of gospel and church-inspired sounds.

“Because I appreciate all things church,” Puth said. “We gotta get the ’90s. Like that chord, I first heard that chord on this record Talking Book by Stevie Wonder.”

“I used to be all the time fascinated with that chord, and I all the time wondered where it got here from,” he said. “It’s sort of a jazz-ish sort of thing without going too deep into it.”

After continuing with the chorus, Puth noted that relating to music, listeners’ emotional responses come from a deeper place.

“It does something to me,” he said. “I believe that visceral response that you simply had just now once I did … it’s all present within the chords. And then while you add lyrics on top of it, it’s like cherry on top.”

When Terrell commented, “There’s a language in chords, it makes you are feeling all types of emotions,” Puth agreed, adding that for him, the music itself drives that connection.

“I grew up in Roman Catholic Church, which is a bit different,” he said. “Which is wonderful. It’s great in its own right, but I used to be all the time wondering, there needs to be one other level.”

Puth, a New Jersey native, previously shared with “Armchair Expert host Dax Shepherd” how his parents discovered his musical talent after he shocked his church congregation by playing a whole mass from memory. 

“I believe my parents knew I used to be artsy and musical once I went to Catholic school, which meant I went to Catholic Church,” the “One Call Away” singer said within the podcast interview. “That was the deal. I might hear the identical music, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy Lord.’ I might hear the identical music time and again every Sunday, sometimes 3 times per week. 

“I remember in the future, the church organist didn’t show up. I checked out everybody and said, ‘Don’t put the tape on. I’ve memorized it because I heard it so persistently,’ and everybody checked out me like an alien … I used to be 11 or 12.”

“I played the entire mass from memory,” he continued. “It wasn’t like a cocky thing. It’s identical to, I’ve heard enough times, I do know methods to do it. … My parents are like, ‘OK, we’ll go get your brain tested, see what is going on on up there.’’

In a July interview with The Christian Post, gospel legend CeCe Winans reflected on how CCM and gospel music have the flexibility to achieve beyond the partitions of the church.

“There’s power in music when it’s negative and when it’s positive,” she said. “That’s why it’s so vital after we sing the gospel. … It’s in those darkest moments that it matters most.”

“People being encouraged, people understanding that though things didn’t end up the way in which you thought they might, God loves you, and He’s within the midst of the hearth with you. He’s within the midst of the flood with you,” she added.

Winans, who, together with her brother, BeBe, were among the many first gospel artists to experience crossover success, stressed that the genre’s future must remain tethered to its spiritual roots at the same time as it sees more mainstream success. 

“Our prayer, and I’m sure I can speak for BeBe, is similar because it’s all the time been,” the Grammy-winning singer said. “That gospel music will proceed to spread and to achieve those that are outside of the church, to bring them in. That’s the entire goal: to achieve people for Christ, to achieve them with the love of God, the peace of God.”

© The Christian Post