Music

On Tuesday night, Charlie Puth was just grateful to be with an audience instead of his phone screen.

“It was good to be in front of TikTok for two years, but there’s nothing like doing this in front of real, live people,” he told the rapt and energetic audience at New York City’s Beacon Theatre. The pop star and, yes, bona fide TikTok sensation, was in the City That Never Sleeps for the second show of his just-launched One Night Only tour supporting his new album Charlie.

Earlier this month, Puth teased how the tour of more intimate venues came together as a sort of post-pandemic testing of the waters in an interview with Billboard‘s Pop Shop Podcast. “I’ll say what no artist will ever say: I did not know where I stood as a touring artist,” he explained. “We got through a worldwide pandemic — I thought, at one point, my career as a touring artist was over. I had no idea…It has been, like, a couple of years since I had something on Billboard. Like, where did I stand as a touring artist?”

With a set re-creating the singer’s kooky, musically ingenious interior world depicted on the cover of Charlie, no opening act, and a sold-out crowd of superfans going haywire for every song in his repertoire, Puth proved once and for all that he can stand alone, having come into his own as a confident, goofy and pitch-perfect pop star of his own making.

Below, Billboard rounds up the best moments from Charlie’s One Night Only show in New York City.

Charlie (Don’t) Be Quiet!

There was perhaps no more exhilarating way for Puth to kick off his show than with “Charlie Be Quiet!,” the raucous, shout-it-out anthem that gave the New Jersey native the chance to rock the mic as he playfully wailed, “Charlie, be quiet, don’t make a sound/ You got to lower the noise a little bit now/ If she knows you’re in love, she’s gonna run, run away-ay-ay-ay.”

Tears on Charlie’s Piano

Though he’d opened the tour two nights before with a hometown show at Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, New Jersey, Puth chose New York City as the place to live-debut Charlie deep cut “Tears on My Piano.”

Seated behind his trusty upright piano and bathed in red light, the singer looked like he was having the time of his life belting out the melodic, lovelorn anthem. And even though he’d never performed the track onstage before, the electrified crowd made it immediately clear they had put in their time listening to the studio version by singing along to every single word.

Charlie’s “Extraordinary” Advice

After revealing how the sound of a creaky door hinge led to the creation of Charlie album closer “No More Drama” and running through hit single “Left and Right” (sans BTS’ Jung Kook), “Loser” (“a bit of a self-deprecating anthem, which I think we all need sometimes”) and The Hills-inspired highlight “Smells Like Me,” Puth took a moment to offer his fans a piece of heartfelt encouragement.

“I want all of you — if you take anything out of this night tonight — rather than just watching me perform these songs, which you totally, of course, can do, I know all of you in here are capable of doing something extraordinary in the arts field,” he told his screaming fan base. “What you think is mundane and what you experience every day of your life is extraordinary. You should paint a picture about it, you should write a song about it. That’s how I literally wrote this whole album.”

Charlie Needs You to “Stay”

One fun fact some casual fans may not know is that Puth penned Justin Bieber and The Kid LAROI’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 2021 collaboration “Stay,” which has remained on the chart for a stunning 63 weeks and counting. After showing off some impressively candid piano chops and spilling some tea about how Peter Cetera’s music and other “’80s power bops” sparked the song’s hook, the songwriter made the No. 1 hit his own by transforming it into a pulsing, midtempo piano ballad.

Charlie Takes It to Church

While Puth closed the show with an encore of 2015’s “See You Again” and played all the old favorites like “We Don’t Talk Anymore,” “Attention,” “BOY” and “Done for Me,” the most powerful moment of the evening came when he dusted off his 2015 sophomore single “One Call Away.”

“No matter where you go, know you’re not alone/ I’m only one call away/ I’ll be there to save the day/ Superman got nothing on me/ I’m only one call away,” he crooned at the piano, taking the Beacon Theatre to church in a massive, chill-inducing sing-along.