Charlie Puth is on a roll right now: he just dropped an incredible new collaboration track called “Done For Me” with Kehlani, and he’s getting ready to introduce his latest album “Voicenotes” into the universe. When the singer recently stopped by Music Choice, he dished the stories behind both of these exciting projects.
“When I made this album, I wanted it to be an album. So there’s definitely gonna be, you know, a big theme overall theme of like R&B from that time period that small time period of 1988-1990 like everything Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis did like heavily nodding to them,” Charlie shared. “I’m very inspired by all the music that came out in that very short time period, even everything that came after that as well, so there is that thematic element there lyrically. It’s about my travels from the east coast to the west coast and how celebrity has affected me in some ways – but there’s also some worldly-type songs on there too without getting into you know giving it away completely there are some surprises on there”.
So, about that killer track with Kehlani that we mentioned earlier? Charlie explained how it all happened – in its synth-heavy glory.
“I’ve always been obsessed with collecting vintage synthesizers and I now have accumulated probably 15 in my home studio. One of those vintage synthesizers was a ‘Juno 60’ from 1982,” he shared. “It didn’t even have MIDI in it yet and I went home one night being the huge nerd that I am it was actually 4 o’clock in the morning I just played a B minor chord and then a A flat diminished chord and I was like ‘wow, there’s there is not a lot of pop records with an A flat diminished chord in them’ so I kinda just carried on, sped the song up, changed the keys a couple of times and then it was 6 o’clock in the morning and then my brother walked in and… he asked what I was doing. Something him being there made me want to make the song even better… I just put this beat on and it sounded like, you know, I was walking out of a club in 1982.”
“I drove to my friend’s house on this street called Nightingale which is in the Hollywood Hills,” he added. “I played it and it sounded like it was the soundtrack of my driving and then I sat on the song for a couple months, thought it was just gonna be an album cut and uh I sent it to Kehlani she put her beautiful voice on it and that just made it really really special. The End.”
Okay… amazing!
Check out the song below if you haven’t experienced it yet, and make sure to leave us your reactions.