Charlie Puth made “most of” his new album on TikTok.
The ‘We Don’t Talk Anymore’ hitmaker, who confirmed his eponymous-titled follow-up to 2018’s ‘Voicenotes’ is now complete, has revealed how he used the video-sharing platform to create the new songs.
Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, he said: “I’m going to call the album, ‘Charlie’. It’s done. I’ve made most of it on TikTok. My goal for this album is for everybody to know every song title before it comes out. I love the fact that ‘Light Switch’ has been teased for months, and people are making bootlegs of it. Some producers have even taken, run it through Isotope, and taken the acapella’s, and made their own versions of ‘Light Switch’. I love that. I think music should be twisted and pulled in many different directions. That was just the goal for this album, and I’m really excited for people to hear it.”
Charlie explained how he scrapped his original songs for the album as he didn’t like any of the music he was making in 2019, before turning to TikTok amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said: “I didn’t really like any of the music that I put out in 2019, and I didn’t want to make an album of that. Didn’t feel very authentic. I felt like I was kind of pretending to be a cool guy.
“So, I scrapped that, and then, 2020, of course, happened. It was kind of a year of reset, but I was happy of that year of reset, because I really got to build up the TikTok thing, and everybody kind of made fun of me at first for focusing so much on TikTok.”
The ‘How Long’ singer added how TikTok is a “safe place” where he can reach out and connect with his fans.
He said: “It is a safe place, and what I fell in love with originally is that people are being quirky and vulnerable. Even recently there, as I do browsing late at night, I saw a kid who was crying because he didn’t get into Juilliard. I’m thinking to myself, I didn’t get into Juilliard either. I wonder if I should let them know that sometimes things end up the way that they’re supposed to like they did for me. And I did. I think it made them feel better. It was almost like a blanket statement for everybody that sometimes rejection can be a beautiful thing, where it leads you down a path that you didn’t even know existed.”
Listen to the full interview on Apple Music now via www.music.apple.com/us/post/1606324681.