As Charlie Puth reached the final run of his show at the Kia Forum on Wednesday, the singer smiled at the audience in Inglewood and hinted at something special still to come.
“We haven’t done this song like this in quite a while,” Puth said, as his fingers floated over the piano keys and the familiar opening melody of “See You Again” began.
And it sounds just like it always does, as does Puth’s vocal, which opens this No. 1 hit from 2015 with hip-hop artist Wiz Khalifa.
Then a wave of screams rose from the fans up front, spreading throughout the arena as they recognized Khalifa walking out of the shadows at the back of stage.
It had been a while, as Puth had promised, with their last duet coming on Jan. 31, 2020, when Puth and Khalifa performed it at halftime of a Los Angeles Lakers game in tribute to Laker star Kobe Bryant and eight other people who’d died in a helicopter crash five days earlier.
This was the biggest moment in a night with many surprises and highlights. Earlier, singer Jennifer Hudson joined Puth on the Kirk Franklin gospel song “Silver & Gold.” Before that, singer Coco Jones joined him for her vocal part on “Sideways” from Puth’s new album “Whatever’s Clever!” released in March.
Not that Puth needs any guests or gimmicks to win over crowds on his Whatever’s Clever! World Tour. At 34, the singer-keyboardist, who got his start as a 17-year-old posting his music on YouTube, has a dedicated following.
A following that includes Taylor Swift, the biggest star in the pop universe, who on her 2024 song “The Tortured Poets Department” sang, “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist,” which, as shoutouts go, is about as good as it gets.
After a musical introduction by his terrific band, Puth ambled on stage for “Beat Yourself Up,” the first of 19 songs over an hour and 40 minutes. The lush harmonies of the arrangement, featuring Puth’s voice stacked with those of his three backing vocalists, closed out that number. A funky slap-bass solo launched “How Long,” and the night flowed seamlessly from there.
In person, Puth has a boyish style, like a musical variant of actor Paul Rudd. He wore a blue Dodgers polo shirt tucked into the front of his jeans, but left hanging loose in the back. “This is what I’d wear to Catholic school,” he joked between “Washed Up” and “LA Girls,” and you absolutely believe that is true.
Before playing the latter tune, Puth talked about how older songs, such as 2018’s “LA Girls,” have taken on new meanings for him as the years pass and he’s changed. In that song, he’s freshly landed in L.A. – he’s lived here now for a decade – and while spending time with Nikki, Nicole, Tiffany and Heather, as he sings in the song, he still feels the pull of the East Coast girl he left behind.
That’s a young man’s song, through and through. A few numbers later, the brand-new ballad “Home” finds him in the role of a husband and father, both of which he now is, missing his loves when they’re not home.
“I was thinking as I was doing those little tinkles on the piano,” Puth said at its close. Plans, whether creating a song or just thinking of the route you’ll take across L.A., have a way of slipping sideways, he continued.
“You get there … but it’s 20 percent different,” he said. “It’s kind of like writing songs. The meaning of this [next] song has morphed. What it means to me now is not showing emotion versus showing emotions to other people.
“I encourage everyone here tonight to be emotive, be emotional, it’s OK to cry,” he said of “Cry,” which started as a song about his feelings about the death of his grandmother, but shifted into encouraging his father to let his feelings about that out.
“Cry” was one of eight songs from Puth’s new album “Whatever’s Clever.” On the record, it features a Kenny G sax solo, but alas, Kenny G was not among the night’s musical guests.
The second half of the show delivered a handful of earlier fan favorites, such as “We Don’t Talk Anymore,” which bounced along on a tropical groove, and “Attention,” both of which drew loud cheers as the opening notes identified the song, both of which had fans on their feet to dance and sing along.
“Cheating On You,” like many of the numbers in the night, is built on a pop foundation but expanded to include R&B, soul, funk and jazz at different points. Here, where a modern pop song might wrap up by the three-minute mark, Puth and the band played on instrumentally for nearly that long again.
“Isn’t music amazing?” he said at its close. “It can gather us all here on a Thursday night. It is Thursday? It’s Wednesday! That’s how lost I am in the music.
“I’m very inspired by music from the church,” Puth continued, still playing the piano softly as he spoke. “And I’m learning about it every day.
“Church music has these type of chord changes,” he said, demonstrating on the keys. “I don’t know what chord that is, but it’s divine light, it’s beautiful.”
“Suffer” has usually filled the next spot on the tour, which kicked off in San Diego last week. Here, though, Puth and the backing vocalists substituted the 1993 gospel song “Silver & Gold,” originally by Kirk Franklin and the Family, a decision that made perfect sense the moment Jennifer Hudson walked out to join the number.
Hudson, wearing a long blue cape with sparkling adornments on the fabric, played Aretha Franklin in the 2021 biopic “Respect.” You know she knows her way around a gospel song, and here her voice swooped and soared like a musical prophet.
After a minimal encore – Puth walked off for maybe a minute as the band vamped on the end of “Love in Exile” – the ballad “One Call” opened with a gorgeous a capella verse by him and the backing singers.
“See You Again,” which was originally written in tribute to the late actor Paul Walker for the soundtrack of “Furious 7,” remains a sorrowful if hopeful ballad. “Changes,” which wrapped up the night, has a bit of that quality too, and as all the songs that preceded it, was delivered impeccably by Puth and his players.