It’s either an immense pleasure or a bad omen to be mentioned by Taylor Swift in one of her songs. In Charlie Puth’s case, being named in the title track of her densest album yet, 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, was the former. And it even influenced his latest record.
In the song “The Tortured Poets Department," Swift sings, “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” while illustrating a budding relationship. (It’s widely believed to be about Swift’s fling with The 1975’s Matt Healy). Puth just opened up about what the lyric meant to him with these words:
That’s the lyric that inspired this album. I think there’s a lot layered into however many words that nice lyric had. ‘Bigger artist’ means you have to open up. That’s why millions of people can relate to her, and I always felt like I kind of put a cap on how many people could relate to me. And, that’s a scary thing to open up that can of worms.
Charlie Puth brought up being among the memorable lyrics on The Tortured Poets Department while on Today. In the interview, he was talking about making his latest album, Whatever’s Clever!, which came out back in March. It’s Puth’s first album in four years, and it marked a new approach from him in terms of how he decided to write songs.
Apparently, hearing the lyric from the Taylor Swift song led the “See You Again” singer to reflect on why he’s not a “bigger artist”. He realized that he was perhaps keeping his inner feelings too close to the vest, as he continued:
It would be advice which I would pass down to other artists, too, which is ‘Just open up.’ And, it sounds like such an easy thing to do, but it's terrifying, and a hard thing to do. It’s a good push to hear that in a song.
Taylor Swift certainly doesn’t shy away from being transparent in her work. From calling herself a “functional alcoholic” on “Fortnight” to saying “I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free” in “So Long London.” She perhaps made Puth realize that part of her success has to do with all her artful oversharing, which is one of the reasons she’s so beloved. He figured it was something he could work on with his music.
Puth has also been on the road this year with the Whatever’s Clever! World Tour. It has had him playing at massive venues like Los Angeles’s Kia Forum and New York City’s Madison Square Garden. The 34-year-old recently wrapped his second leg in Europe and will hit cities in Asia and Australia this fall.
As Puth celebrates becoming a “bigger artist” after Taylor Swift said it a couple of years ago in a song, there’s no word on when we’ll hear new music from her after putting out The Life of a Showgirl and getting married to Travis Kelce. You can see Swift play songs from TTPD on the Eras Tour with a Disney+ subscription, though.
