Charlie Puth is an American singer, musician, composer and producer. The public first discovered him on YouTube and then, in 2015, there was his worldwide success with the title See you again by Wiz Khalifa for the film Fast and Furious 7, which reached No. 1 on the charts in 26 countries. An immediate success, confirmed with his first single, Marvin Gaye, in duet with Meghan Trainor (2016). To this, we must obviously add his collaborations with Dua Lipa, Selena Gomez, Gabby Barrett or Elton John. This Friday, October 7, 2022, he releases your new album charlieor 12 very personal titles.
franceinfo: This album will undoubtedly delight your 20 million fans on TikTok. You have, moreover, built a title with them: Light Switch. charlie is also and primarily a way of paying homage to those who gave birth to you as an artist?
Charlie Puth: Yes, in a way, it’s really something very different for me. Part of the reason I chose to share this process and create the song on TikTok is that I wanted people to be familiar with the song, the project, and that by the time it was released, that they feel like they made it with me.
The song that opens the album shows how much you have decided to let go, to expose yourself. The title That’s hilarious recounts a breakup you experienced in 2019, an extremely painful breakup. Was it important to communicate on this, to succeed in putting words to what touched you?
Many of the songs on this album are a kind of musical closure, meant to end things.
Charlie Puthat franceinfo
It’s good to experience these things in life and then put them into an art form like that, you can listen to it and in a few years you can look back and listen to this song and think about what you were and the path taken.
It was your father who introduced you to R&B artists and your mother, a piano teacher, to classical music. You started putting your fingers on the keys at the age of four before learning and studying jazz at the age of ten. Did you really want to become a jazz pianist at the start?
Yes, but with a strong affiliation to pop music because it affects more people. And I always thought there was a way to combine the two together. That’s what I did in my previous album and in this album, I wanted to put my feelings first and then the music came.
What made you want to make music? You had a form of shyness and perhaps you needed to express yourself through texts?
Maybe. I believe it had more to do with people’s reactions. I’ve always loved people’s reactions to music. When I was very young, I saw how music affected my friends and the people around me. I made CDs myself when I was little. I very quickly realized that if I made music myself, it would affect my friends and people even more strongly.
I would like to talk about the song, Left and Right and collaborating with JungCook of BTS, a South Korean artist. The title has really panicked the counters since its release. There, we are at more than 220 million views on YouTube. Was it also important for you to propose somewhat new collaborations, which weren’t necessarily expected?
I like international artists. I like having different sounds and voices on the same projects, getting things you don’t expect.
Charlie Puthat franceinfo
For example, for BTS music, they sound very clear, very well produced. I wondered how JungCook would sound on dirtier, less K-pop sound. I love putting artists out of their comfort zone, because you never know what song is going to come out of that.
In the face of all this success, whether through song See you again or even in collaborations like with Elton John or Gaby Barrett, did you lose your footing at some point?
I believe. I think musically I wasn’t really aligned with myself anymore. That’s why I forced myself, on my own, to re-evaluate certain things and I’m very happy to have had this time because I believe that there are wonderful things that have come out of it.
You will be in France on December 1st at the Salle Pleyel. Going on stage, meeting your audience, is also another dimension. Isn’t that ultimately what interests you the most?
I think I like the studio as much as the live. Playing for my fans on Tik Tok is what’s going on right now in terms of performance, but there’s nothing better than playing for my fans in real life.