{"id":254741,"date":"2026-01-20T18:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T18:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/254741\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T18:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T18:59:09","slug":"new-album-taylor-swift-and-the-super-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/254741\/","title":{"rendered":"New Album, Taylor Swift, and The Super Bowl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t
\n\t\t\tC
\n\t\tharlie Puth<\/a>\u2019s Whatever\u2019s Clever!<\/a>, due March 27, is his fourth album, but in some ways, it feels more like a debut. The collection is his best work yet, built around an entirely new approach \u2014 airy, jazzy, live-instrument-driven production that tends to land somewhere between Bruce Hornsby\u2019s \u201cThe Way It Is\u201d and Michael Jackson\u2019s \u201cHuman Nature.\u201d Puth is 34 now, married, with a baby on the way, and he\u2019s finally found his full footing after making music that didn\u2019t always live up to his potential. His second album, 2018\u2019s Voicenotes, with its Quincy Jones-meets-Babyface R&B classicism, was a high point, but he had a habit of overthinking his music, dropping between-album trial-balloon singles that tended to fall short. Critics \u201cpanned my music for no consistency or whatever,\u201d says Puth. \u201cI admit, at points, they were right.\u201d In jazz-club residencies in New York and L.A. last fall, Puth previewed songs from the new album, and recast old hits from \u201cAttention\u201d to \u201cWe Don\u2019t Talk Anymore\u201d in arrangements that exploited his considerable skills as a keyboardist and bandleader. (He laughs off speculation that he was sending a message by singing the latter song, originally a duet with ex Selena Gomez, around the time of her wedding: \u201cWhy? Because I played it? I\u2019m not gonna change the set list!\u201d) A major tour,<\/a> which will include his first headlining show at Madison Square Garden, will expand on those club dates. \u200a\u201cI want to take the experience I had at the Blue Note and make it built for arenas, but still intimate and small,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs he prepared for the biggest year of his life \u2014\u00a0 with the tour, album, a performance of the national anthem at the Super Bowl, and the birth of his first child \u2014\u00a0 Puth sat down to talk about how he got here, including a certain shout-out from a pop superstar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tWatch the video interview below\t<\/p>\n

\n\tYour new album feels like an artist really finding himself. One of the steps along the way was a very public moment, when Taylor Swift<\/a> sang about you on The Tortured Poets Department<\/a>: \u201cWe declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.\u201d
It was pretty shocking<\/a>. I don\u2019t 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\u2019s like, \u201cI better write something good, \u2019cause maybe she, and some others, will hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRight after you heard about that, you decided to release \u201cHero,\u201d which you described as the first single from your new album \u2014 but it\u2019s not on this album.
Yeah. What the hell was I talking about? I think I sometimes just get a little ahead of myself. I wasn\u2019t ready to put out an album at that point.\u2026 I sat with myself and thought maybe I should, for the first time in my career, actually make an album. I\u2019d never sat down and said, \u201cLet\u2019s make an album and then release it.\u201d It\u2019s always, \u201cThe song\u2019s doing well, we need to put it out. And while I\u2019m doing radio promos and whatnot, going on TV, I\u2019m going back to my hotel and making an album.\u201d This album, Whatever\u2019s Clever!, is the first time where I just sat down and I had a lot of time. I just stayed with myself and [producer] BloodPop, and just made a full body of work. So I wasn\u2019t chasing my tail, but it\u2019s been almost a decade of chasing my tail.<\/p>\n

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\n\tSo what was the sonic approach of the discarded album that had \u201cHero\u201d on it?
There was no sonic approach. It was just all over the place. It was a lot of consideration of other people: \u201cI hope people like this.\u2026\u201d I had a collection of songs that sounded good, but were missing the gut punch.\u2026 I remember Max Martin called me and said in his very soft tone, \u201cDo you know what I miss from a Charlie Puth record? I\u2019m missing some of the emotion lately.\u201d And I thought to myself, \u201cOh, my God, how could I let myself get to this point of where I feel like I have to be on a song conveyor belt and have to get things done for the sake of getting things done?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tDid the Taylor mention in fact put a bit of a fire under you to live up to the shout-out?\u00a0
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\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe first song you wrote for the album was \u201cI Used to Be Cringe.\u201d How did it come to you?
I remember it was my wife Brooke\u2019s birthday. I was on my way to this wonderful restaurant in Sherman Oaks, and these songs will just pop into my head. And I heard this lyric called \u201cI Used to Be Cringe.\u201d And the title itself is cringey. It\u2019s like, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d You can smell the comments, as they say \u2014 \u201cUsed to be?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cThat\u2019s an interesting song title. What would that sound like?\u201d And I\u2019m just talking to myself while Brooke\u2019s on her phone. It\u2019s like a 30-minute drive down the hill, and I just start writing this whole song in F major. And it has a very flowy McCartney-esque chord progression. And it\u2019s all just because Taylor had said something about me. It gave me enough excitement to write another song in my head. And now we\u2019re ending the album with that.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt raises the question \u2014 when, in your opinion, were you the most cringe?
I think when I dyed my hair blond just to get reactions \u2014 that\u2019s literally a lyric in the song. Saying things in interviews that weren\u2019t true, because I was told by higher-ups that I\u2019m a white guy with brown hair. Literally, they said I need some excitement around my project. We need drama. And I didn\u2019t know what it meant to be an artist. I started out writing music for other artists. So I made tons of mistakes along the way. The blond hair was really bad. I don\u2019t know what I was thinking there.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou had a lip ring at one point.
Yeah, man. It wasn\u2019t real either. I would talk differently in 2016.\u00a0 I would go to a radio show and tell myself, \u201cYou\u2019re gonna put on a cool-guy accent because you have a big song out right now.\u201d It was just so much inauthenticity.\u2026 I thought I had to be a certain way to be popular. And again, it\u2019s part of, I think, a young man growing up and not knowing himself and being very influenced by those around him. Comments that the higher-ups at the record label or former management would make were sometimes right. So if they\u2019re right about that, they must be right about making up a bullshit story, because it\u2019ll make the song more exciting. None of that was who I am. I can\u2019t even look at myself half the time from the years 2015 to 2022. I just didn\u2019t know what I was doing. I used to be very cringe.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt some point you realized you\u2019re not gonna try to be some super-cool version of yourself.
Yeah. It\u2019s never gonna happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI Got what taylor meant: To be a bigger artist, you have to let people in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen did you have the realization that you were gonna drop all of the pretending?
I think when Brooke became a serious part of my life, it was weird to do that in front of her because it\u2019s someone I\u2019ve known all my life. I never did it in front of my mom because my mom knows me so well. I\u2019m not gonna do it in front of Brooke because Brooke\u2019s going to look at me like, \u201cWho am I dating right now?\u201d It stopped then. And then I really just think the male frontal lobe doesn\u2019t develop as quick. I really think scientifically it\u2019s that. It just took me a while to grow up.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrooke is someone you\u2019ve known since you were a kid. Marrying her, rather than someone from the showbiz world, says a lot about the life you\u2019ve decided to have.
I\u2019ve always wanted that life that you speak of. I knew very early on that it was Brooke, as well.\u00a0 Again, frontal lobe not developed. Twenty-four-year-old kid thinking to myself I need to enjoy the fruits of my labor: \u201cI deserve all of this.\u201d I\u2019m very thankful for every experience, but I always knew what was best for me. I just pushed it away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking back at a song like \u201cLA Girls,\u201d from 2018, there was a lot of ambivalence about whether that was the world you wanted to be playing in.\u00a0
I thought to myself as a young kid that I had to be in constant turmoil in my life in order to write great music. Couldn\u2019t be furthest from the truth. It\u2019s when I was most comfortable and happy is when I wrote my best music. I don\u2019t know where this came from, where I had to \u2026 I don\u2019t know if that was people giving me bad advice. I think that was my own doing. My life had to be in constant disarray to come up with melodies, and so I resisted settling down for such a long time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u200aSo when you got married, did you have that lingering fear of \u201cI\u2019m happy \u2014 this is gonna screw everything up\u201d?
No, I just chemically knew that it was the right thing to do. It made me not wanna look at past interviews of myself anymore, but I knew I made the right decision.\u00a0 I feel back to how I felt before I became a singer.<\/p>\n

\n\tWas there a moment when this actually clicked in or was it more gradual?
I was in New York, I was staying at the Greenwich, and I don\u2019t drink at all. I think it clouds my judgment. But it was right before the third album was about to come out, and I was like, \u201cI\u2019m just gonna have a rager.\u201d And I woke up with the worst hangover I\u2019ve ever felt in my life. It lasted for, I think, two days. And I saw pictures of myself with people I didn\u2019t even know. And I remember they all wanted to get coffee the next morning, in a scene-y part of town. I saw them all eating, and then I just turned the other way and walked back to the hotel and just stayed there by myself for a couple days. It\u2019s hard to describe, but after years of surrounding myself with the wrong things and saying the wrong things, it\u2019s profound when it just all comes to a screeching halt one day at 30 years old in New York City.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotograph by SACHA LECCA<\/p>\n

\n\tThe song \u201cCry\u201d is about your dad, and features Kenny G on saxophone. How did that come together?\u00a0
Me and BloodPop looked at each other while we were making that song and thought we need to put Kenny G on this, because it just felt like Sade, it felt like 1988. I texted him, and he sent [a solo] back right away because he was like, \u201cI just love the record so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut I wrote \u201cCry\u201d for my dad, and I really resisted [doing] that. BloodPop has a very unique way of making me feel uncomfortable yet comfortable. The first day he came in with a big whiteboard and said, \u201cOK, we\u2019re gonna have some really tough conversations.\u201d And I started getting acid reflux, and he was like, \u201cWhy haven\u2019t you written a song about your dad?\u201d I got defensive: \u201cI don\u2019t want to talk about my dad. I just wanna collaborate with you and make bops\u201d is what I legitimately said to him. And he was like, \u201cYour dad\u2019s gonna want a song one day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen a week later, [my dad\u2019s] mom passed away. The song\u2019s basically about not being afraid to show emotion. It\u2019s like Blood predicted the future. And as we were at the funeral, I thought to myself that we gotta finish that because, turns out, he does need it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also a full-on yacht-rock song on this album written with Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins. What did you take away from the experience of working with them?
That I\u2019m not alone. That there are musicians that have been doing it for much longer than I, that have a very similar approach to chords and implementing jazz into pop music. And I slapped myself on the head. I\u2019m like, \u201cOf course! You got all that stuff from the two legends that are sitting on your couch writing the song with you right now.\u201d Michael McDonald writes music like a hit songwriter of today. He has the same approach as Amy Allen. And it just reminds me that all music really is the same.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re doing the national anthem<\/a> at the Super Bowl in February.
The hardest song ever written.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought i had to be in constant turmoil to write great music. couldn\u2019t be less true.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd for some reason, Whitney Houston was brought into the conversation, and now you have to match the Whitney Houston performance?
Because of New Jersey. She\u2019s from Newark. And I would be the second New Jersey native, as The Star-Ledger wrote, to sing the national anthem. It\u2019s a great honor. I\u2019m going to be inspired by what Whitney did, but I can\u2019t ever touch what she did. That\u2019s the best one ever done \u2014 that and the Chris Stapleton one. That was raw. Made grown men cry. I just want to do my own thing with the hardest piece of music ever written. And I just wanna show people that I can do it. I feel like people don\u2019t really think of me as, like, a stand-alone vocalist at times\u2026. I actually have always wanted to do this, and I recorded a little demo, just me singing with the Rhodes and sent it to Roc Nation. I\u2019ve been told Jay-Z loved it, and it got to [NFL Commissioner Roger] Goodell and they all said that I could do it.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo you applied for the gig?\u00a0
I applied. I auditioned for it, but I made up my own audition because I\u2019ve always wanted to do it \u00ad\u2014 because I love it musically. It\u2019s the best song. Musically, it\u2019s so special.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rumor has it they prerecord that because of the cold.
They\u2019ll prerecord bits of it. It\u2019s impossible to mic an orchestra and expect that it\u2019s gonna sound good in a stadium that\u2019s filled with a hundred thousand people that are going to be cheering.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotograph by ELIZABETH WEINBERG<\/p>\n

\n\tBut for you yourself\u2014
I\u2019ll be singing. The mic will be on.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u200aYou\u2019ve said that you had a certain amount of insecurity with your voice, and you perhaps compensated by using Auto-Tune too much in the past.
Oh, yeah. Third album, I tuned my voice way too much. I just wanted people to like my music so much. And if I went off tune, I felt like that would piss people off or it would make them mad, and I want them to be happy. It\u2019s a very outdated way of thinking. And something that I speak out against a lot now. I\u2019d always tell aspiring songwriters and artists to embrace the imperfections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThose concerns in your head about people being mad at you and stuff like that seem, frankly, more like psychological issues.\u00a0
I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll need years of therapy. I always think people are mad at me. I\u2019m always afraid of disappointing people, and I don\u2019t feel like that\u2019s ever gonna go away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you wrote your breakthrough hit, \u201cSee You Again,\u201d you were in a mode of writing for other people. You never thought you would sing the hook \u2014 people like Sam Smith were supposed to.
And then I think Skylar Grey sang the hook, and I think Jason Derulo sang the hook. Chris Brown sang the hook. Suddenly all these A-list artists wanting to sing your song \u2014 it happened overnight for me. I had all this attention from all these record labels overnight, saying crazy things to me. That song was written because my friend who had passed two years prior always told me I would write that song. So I wrote it for him. And what\u2019s great is that people who were born 10 years ago are listening to it today, and it feels like a brand-new song for them. It\u2019s the gift that keeps on giving. It\u2019s the power of music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote \u2018cry\u2019 for my dad. I resisted it, but it Turned out he needed it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPeople may not realize that the song really owes a lot to Bruce Springsteen. It has that chord progression that he used in \u201cMy City of Ruins\u201d \u2014 and also the mournful approach to the lyrics seems inspired by The Rising in general, which I know was your first Bruce album.
The reason why it was my first Bruce album was because my town that I lived in was a Wall Street sleeper town, and there were a lot of people who lost their lives in 9\/11. He wrote that record pretty quickly. I remember going to Jack\u2019s Music Shoppe in Red Bank, New Jersey, and picking it up and hearing it and just being so blown away. I felt like he wrote something for me personally. And my friends who actually lost their moms and dads, they felt the same way. I felt close to him and like it was the first time I ever felt that with any artist.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re an artist pondering one of the big questions right now, which is how the infinite supply of AI music will affect real music. One thought is maybe it makes artists\u00a0 aim to be more human, more weird, more individual.
That\u2019s what I did on this album. I had to lean into the human aspect. The vocals couldn\u2019t be tuned like they were on my last project. Not everything can be so perfect. It makes it feel like a human made it. That\u2019s also something BloodPop wanted me to lean into. He was like, \u201cHow many times can you sing about a relationship from seven, eight years ago? It\u2019s all starting to sound the same. Sing songs about family. You\u2019ve never sung about that.\u201d I think there\u2019s gonna be such a wave of all this artificial stuff, but it\u2019s gonna make the human stuff stand out even more. I refuse to believe an AI engine will make me cry the way I do when I hear a song like \u201cI Can\u2019t Make You Love Me.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYou have a big year ahead \u2014 both your baby and your album are due in March, and then touring. It\u2019s tough to tour with a new baby.
I honestly can\u2019t even think about it right now because that\u2019s why my jaw tenses up. I always want to make sure that I\u2019m there for baby. I wanna make sure that the baby has a normal life, and we\u2019ll have the big headphones onstage, behind stage, and hopefully I can wave to baby.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo they\u2019re coming with you?
Not for everything. Because touring is a really unnatural thing. And I can just tell that\u2019s not gonna be sustainable. So we\u2019ll do it where it makes sense, but I just want the most normal life for my child possible. I don\u2019t want them to travel on airplanes constantly.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis album is probably the biggest pivot of your career. Do you see it as establishing a direction where you\u2019re gonna go forward, or do you want to leave it open?
I think sonically, musically, things may change and pivot, but what remains the same is the nucleus of it. I\u2019m always gonna remain myself and tell the truth from now on.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat does that mean?
It means I\u2019m not gonna embellish things anymore and be so concerned if people are gonna like me. Of course, I\u2019m gonna always care about what my fans think and what people think of my music. I wouldn\u2019t be human if I didn\u2019t.\u00a0But I\u2019m not gonna let that consume my life so much that it makes me write music that I end up scrapping \u2019cause I was just so concerned about what people thought. I\u2019m always just gonna remain true to myself, which is the most lame thing to say ever. But it\u2019s true. I\u2019m gonna be me. Because that ended up being the coolest thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"C harlie Puth\u2019s Whatever\u2019s Clever!, due March 27, is his fourth album, but in some ways, it feels…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,41602,93,61,60,6543,127076],"class_list":{"0":"post-254741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-charlie-puth","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-taylor-swift","14":"tag-the-rolling-stone-interview"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}