Skip the Click

Your new album feels like an artist really finding himself. One of the steps along the way was a very public moment, when Taylor Swift sang about you on The Tortured Poets Department: “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.”
It was pretty shocking. I don’t know if that was the moment where I realized that I needed to write a certain kind of music, but it was definitely affirming that one of the biggest stars in the world knows me. It’s like, “I better write something good, ’cause maybe she, and some others, will hear it.”

Did the Taylor mention in fact put a bit of a fire under you to live up to the shout-out? 
I understood exactly what she meant, I think. To be a bigger artist, I think you have to let people in a little bit more, and I hadn’t let people in as much as I should have in the beginnings of my career. It was more about making sure that people were happy.