Charlie Puth brought an understated yet soulful delivery to the National Anthem before the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Accompanying himself on electric piano, Puth began the song softly but upped the intensity on the “Rockets red glare” verse, his voice soaring and nailing the high notes as a choir joined him. The song reached its climax as four Air Force jets flew overheard. Puth raised his arms, waving to the crowd as he finished, clearly taking in the moment.
In the days before his performance, Puth sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and Ebro Darden to discuss how he was preparing for the show. “I think the best way for me specifically to approach it is, the arrangement is everything for me,” he said. “I always reverse engineer how I hear my own music in my head and then it’s just kind of pulling it apart and making it a feasible product to hold. I’ve been rehearsing this in my head for months, if that makes sense.”
Puth was announced as a performer at the Super Bowl back in November and was met with some criticism that he wasn’t the best choice for the gig. One X user wrote that “we’ve fallen from when Whitney Houston sang at the Super Bowl,” referring to her iconic rendition of the song in 1991. “Charlie Puth? He’s not gonna give us vocals I’m afraid.”
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He was quick to respond, quoting the tweet and stating, “I’ll never claim to be as good of a singer as Whitney Houston ever was. But I assure you we’re putting a really special arrangement together- in D major. It’ll be one of my best vocal performances.”
Puth’s rendition of the National Anthem comes amid the rollout for his upcoming fourth album, “Whatever’s Clever,” releasing on March 27. He already dropped the lead single “Changes” and followed with “Beat Yourself Up,” and at his Blue Note residency in Los Angeles last fall, he debuted the track “Sideways” featuring Coco Jones, which is expected to appear on the project.
From Variety US