Charlie Puth is ready to reintroduce himself to the world with his new album, Charlie

"Oh no, this girl just dropped her whole salad. She's gotta go back to Sweetgreen," Grammy-nominated musician Charlie Puth tells EW over the phone as furtively as he can. Fresh off his performance at Global Citizen Festival, the Rumson, N.J. native is taking in the sights and sounds of New York City when he notices the leafy letdown playing out in front of him. "She has to start over!" he whispers. "She has to walk all the way to Greenwich [Village] right now and get back in line at the height of rush hour and get her salad. That's literally what January 2020 felt like to me."

At the beginning of that year, Puth was, both personally and professionally, adrift. The pitch-perfect musician had been crafting his third record — the follow-up to 2016's Nine Track Mind and 2018's Voicenotes — alongside industry greats, but felt the process behind it was stifling both his creativity and authenticity. At the same exact time, Puth also found himself grieving the loss of two major relationships — one romantic, the other platonic. As his perfect world came crumbling down, he realized he was wildly off course.

So, amid the coronavirus pandemic, he left everything he'd recorded on the cutting-room floor and started again on his own terms. The result is Charlie, 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.' I look back at it, thinking, 'I can't believe I ever let myself get that low, but at the same time maybe I've made a great album,'" he jokes. "Because I do feel this is my best album so far."

But he didn't do it entirely alone. For the past year and a half, Puth has meticulously documented the creation of the album on TikTok, allowing viewers the unique opportunity to watch him slowly develop 10 out of the 12 tracks featured on its final cut. The videos have not only garnered him a huge fanbase online, but also inspired other budding musicians to put their own spin on the forthcoming songs.

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. As he's discussing the record, which he says is at times "downright theatrical," Puth suddenly shifts gears. "Hey, yes, how ya doing? Sure." He pauses. "I'm taking a picture with somebody right now… It's all good. I'm doing an interview."

As the fan walks away, he basks in the afterglow of being seen in a way he hasn't been before. "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?" Puth wonders. "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 move again," he gleefully says later. "What has happened to my life?"

Puth spoke to EW in September about starting over, coming to terms with loss, working with BTS' Jungkook, and the healing power of music.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You had been creating and releasing music throughout 2019, but ultimately decided to start fresh on this record. What was it about those songs that didn't resonate with you?

CHARLIE PUTH: There was a time after [2018's] Voicenotes where it seemed like everybody wanted to work with me and I got really excited at that opportunity because these were all, at the time, big-name producers. But when you put seven people on one song that's mine it stops sounding like me. I think when people heard previews of the new stuff, they were taken aback [because of] how, just, not refined it was...? I remember listening to it thinking, "I would spend a lot more time on this vocal. I would not use that snare drum." I remember asking to get the stems and taking them into the studio where I usually work and it was all mixed and done. I was a little confused, so I just let the song be. Assuming these are big songwriters and producers, I should probably just let this stay as it is — but always go with your gut!

The music didn't feel very genuine to me anymore. And then I ran into Elton John, and the first time meeting him, the first thing he told me was he could tell I was working with too many people and that it was important that I get back to just making music myself, which is what I did for this album.

What was the first song you wrote for Charlie that made you go, "Okay, this is the direction I should be headed in?"

That'd be track 1, called "That's Hilarious," which is why I made it track 1. The second song was "Light Switch," which came right after that.

You named the album Charlie. Do you see this record as a reintroduction?

Yes. This would be my first album if I had a time machine and I could go back in time and do it. People come up to me and say they're excited for the album, they love the way track 1 or track 4 sounds, and I really feel nobody had ever cared about a whole body of work from me in the past. 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. When I signed with Atlantic, their primary goal was for me to just deliver a full body of work for them, which, previously, was not the case. Before, it was all just about pumping out singles, and nobody really cared about me — they just cared about the song on the radio.

It seems more business-oriented than it is about encouraging your own artistry.

Oh, it would make me feel horrible! Another reason I canceled half those songs I was working on before was because I was being force-fed material I didn't want to perform and that had nothing to do with me. There are things people still don't know about me that they're going to know about me when they hear this album. The album's about two breakups: one romantic relationship ending amicably, one business relationship ending, and the two being so, so different but feeling the same. 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. That was the first preview — that's how I wrote "See You Again" — but I had never experienced such profound loss like in December 2019 or January 2020.

And then the pandemic happened a few months later.

The pandemic happened. [There were] all of these people who I was so manipulated into thinking I had to run everything by to ensure a song was good. [For example,] can I do an uptempo song? They didn't want me to do [2016's] "We Don't Talk Anymore" because they thought a white guy singing a song against a Spanish-sounding guitar would be cultural appropriation. I can't make this stuff up. So then, not having these business heads who I used to have to run everything by, it gave me a similar feeling to when I left [Ellen DeGeneres' Eleveneleven Records]. I didn't have a bad experience, but I went back to college and felt like I had the rug ripped out beneath me. 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 all of the people who used to give me the green light, tell me if something's good or bad." 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. Did you ever think for a moment, "Okay, maybe I'm going to step away from music for a second?"

I just thought I was going to produce music. I had success in that — I produced and wrote "Stay" by Justin Bieber and the Kid LAROI — so I was like, "Okay, well maybe this is my calling. This song is doing super well. I'll just stick to this." But I had in the back of my mind [this idea that] I still really wanted to be the artist. I would think, "One day, everything's going to line up with this pandemic and we're going to be able to go out on tour." I lived at my parents' [house] just like at the end of 2012 when I left Interscope. I had to realize who I was as an artist, and you are taken through that journey through some beats and some melody on this album.

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. "Loser," track 7, the title came first and I thought, "Oh, 'loser' and 'lose her' sound exactly the same." At the time, I kind of equated the record label to "her" — it wasn't really about a person. But I realize that could also apply to a romantic relationship.

When was the strangest time that inspiration struck you while creating Charlie?

We were renting this house close to where I'm from in Monmouth Beach, N.J. I was still in reflecting and self-healing mode and just kind of replaying, like on an old VHS cassette, times where I was both manipulated in the business side of things and in the relationship side of things.

I remember picking this person up outside this club called 1 OAK in L.A. when they had said they wanted nothing to do with me. I remember it being 2 o'clock in the morning and that person crying over the phone saying, "Please come and get me." That really stuck with me because I remember that I said out loud, "I can hear the tears coming out of your eyes." Like in cartoons when a character is crying there are, like, water droplets? When humans cry in real life, you don't hear water droplets — you just see them crying — but I could, literally. It was so profoundly obvious that this person was so upset I felt like I could hear the tears coming out of their eyes. And, of course, me being the songwriter, I was like, "'Here' and 'tears' rhyme. Why did I never think of that?" The piano line simply came to me, and I wrote the whole song ["When You're Sad I'm Sad"]. That's how this whole album happened.

It's fascinating that you can see these connections — both musically and personally — and merge them off the top of your head like that.

It was healing, in a way, because I, for one, really dislike therapists. Maybe this is terrible advice because I do realize that therapy is great for some people, but that's just never worked for me. 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 was forced inauthenticity on the first two albums. Other than "Attention" and "We Don't Talk Anymore," the songs I made with [Jacob Kasher Hindlin], I was filling a lot of checkboxes I thought I had to fill. Like, "Make sure you have the uptempo records!" None of that s--- matters. I don't even perform those songs anymore, and those were songs written with 15 people on one song. I'm not bitter about it, even though it does sound like I may be, but I never thought I could be in a position to produce an entire record myself.

It's interesting that you mention "We Don't Talk Anymore" because that song is not only a hit, but it was later covered by Jimin and Jungkook of BTS. Now you've collaborated with Jungkook on the new song "Left & Right."

That is how Jungkook and I met. That guy doesn't speak English well, but I was able to communicate with him perfectly through melody, and that reassured me that I did a good thing through music. I was able to make a brand-new friend just off melody, and that made me want to make more songs like that.

Charlie deals with heartbreak, but even its darkest lyrics are juxtaposed with a little bit of levity — little laughs on "That's Hilarious," the feel-good guitar on "I Don't Think That I Like Her." Why was it important for you to create that balance?

All of what you hear on this album is parallel to my personality. Somebody told me that those born in December avoid conflict at all costs, and I just want people, at the end of the day, to be harmonious and happy. Even though I was going through the most gut-wrenching time and thought my life was ending, when I wrote "That's Hilarious" I managed to fit in a little "ha ha ha" because it's not all that serious. And I would hope people who listen to this album know I do go through the same feelings and that I'm able to get myself through them, just like they're able to get themselves through them.

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.

Charlie is out Oct. 7.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Make sure to check out more of EW's Fall Music Preview, running all this week through Sept. 30.

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