“This would be my first album if I had a time machine.”
“Oh no, this girl just dropped her whole salad.
“She has to start over!”
Charlie Puth.Kenneth Cappello
That’s literally what January 2020 felt like to me.”
At the beginning of that year, Puth was, both personally and professionally, adrift.
As his perfect world came crumbling down, he realized he was wildly off course.
The result isCharlie, a 12-track LP he produced himself that sees the artist navigating love and longing.
“I call these 12 songs a story that I was ‘living through.’
“Because I do feel this is my best album so far.”
But he didn’t do it entirely alone.
A good number of those fans spring up throughout our interview.
Even though he has his glasses on, they can clock the musician from a mile away.
“Hey, yes, how ya doing?
“I’m taking a picture with somebody right now…
It’s all good.
I’m doing an interview.”
“That stuff that just happened now, I didn’t plan that,” Puth says.
“That didn’t happen to me two years ago.”
When it happens a second time, it prompts him to channel his inner super-spy.
“Maybe I need to find someplace new to sit?”
“I’m just going to stand behind this tree.
Everyone’s super nice.”
The third time, however, charms him the most.
“I mean, oh my God, I need to moveagain,” he gleefully says later.
“What has happened to my life?”
What was it about those songs that didn’t resonate with you?
But when you put seven people on one song that’s mine it stops sounding like me.
I remember listening to it thinking, “I would spend a lot more time onthisvocal.
I would not usethatsnare drum.”
I was a little confused, so I just let the song be.
The music didn’t feel very genuine to me anymore.
The second song was “Light Switch,” which came right after that.
You named the albumCharlie.
Do you see this record as a reintroduction?
This is the first time people are asking me when an album’s coming out on TikTok.
I have the support from a record label now, too.
It seems more business-oriented than it is about encouraging your own artistry.
Oh, it would make me feel horrible!
I never thought a business relationship could feel like a romantic relationship.
Whether it’s romantic or platonic, that’s still a major loss.
I had a little bit of a delayed reaction to everything in my life.
I’d never really experienced loss like that.
I mean, my friend passed away in 2012.
And then the pandemic happened a few months later.
[For example,] can I do an uptempo song?
I can’t make this stuff up.
I was like, “Okay, what do I do now?
I got dropped from my record label.
I’m not gonna be a singer anymore.
I guess I’ll be a producer.”
It was a similar feeling in 2020: “Okay, I guess I’m not touring ever again.
I lost what I thought at the time was the greatest love of all it wasn’t.
I just had to have a conversation with myself, go back to square one.
That’s how I found myself musically on this album.
It sounds like a perfect storm of events that forced you to pause and reevaluate.
I just thought I was going to produce music.
This song is doing super well.
I’ll just stick to this.”
What comes to you first when creating a new song: the melody or the lyrics?
I put the feelings first on this album.
The titles always came first.
But I realize that could also apply to a romantic relationship.
When was the strangest time that inspiration struck you while creatingCharlie?
We were renting this house close to where I’m from in Monmouth Beach, N.J. Like in cartoons when a character is crying there are, like, water droplets?
Why did I never think of that?”
That’s how this whole album happened.
It was healing, in a way, because I, for one, really dislike therapists.
Hearing some chord changes and singing to myself is healing.
It certainly was healing enough for me to make a whole album about it.
It’s authentic and reflective of the experience you were living.
It wasforced inauthenticityon the first two albums.
Like, “double-check you have the uptempo records!”
None of that s— matters.
Now you’ve collaborated with Jungkook on the new song “Left & Right.”
That is how Jungkook and I met.
Why was it important for you to create that balance?
All of what you hear on this album is parallel to my personality.
It’s great to hear that you’ve come out the other side.
I restarted the computer a bunch of times.
I have a brand-new hard drive.
I’m ready to make my love album now.
Charlieis out Oct. 7.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
see to it to check out more of EW’sFall Music Preview,running all this week through Sept. 30.
