Charlie Puth returns with his recently promised new single, “Hero,” the first track to arrive from his impending fourth studio album, and we have Taylor Swift to thank for it.
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Ahead of releasing the track, Puth seemingly alluded to that Taylor Swift TTPD shoutout, that "Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist,” by noting how “these last couple weeks have been really crazy for obvious reasons.” However now he’s directly addressing it, and outright agreeing with Tay Tay’s lyrical declaration.
While talking to Rolling Stone about his upcoming new music and more, Puth agreed, "I think I should be. But to me, (if I'm) a bigger artist, I get to inspire more of my fans and people around the world to pick up an instrument. I'd love to be a bigger artist to inspire other people to be bigger artists."
If somehow a T.Swizzle co-sign wasn’t enough, and you needed further convincing of Charlie’s star status, check out the paragraph long list of Charlie’s musical accomplishments from the last few years, as shared in the official “Hero” press release.
“Puth continues to be one of the industry’s most consistent hitmakers and sought-after collaborators across multiple genres, most recently in the K-pop world by co-producing/writing and featuring on Stray Kids’ latest single ‘Lose My Breath’ and producing/writing ‘Like That’ for BABYMONSTER. Meanwhile, his 2021 co-penned/produced single ‘Stay’ for The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber reigned #1 on the Billboard Global 200 chart for eleven weeks, and his collaboration with Gabby Barrett on their ‘I Hope (Remix)’ earned him his fourth top 10 charting track on the Billboard Hot 100.”
When first announcing the self-produced track he’d co-written alongside John Byron, Jack Rochon and long-time collaborator JKash, Puth revealed that he decided to share the track he initially had reservations about releasing due to its vulnerability, largely because of the encouragement of Swift celebrating his artistry on the title track of her 11th album. A “tremendous sign from one of his own long-time songwriting inspirations,” as the official press release describes it.
Sharing about the songs meaning in a post earlier this week, Charlie wrote, “My new song HERO is about when you see someone you love hurting themselves, ruining the things in their life that are good, but you just can’t save them.” alongside the amber-hued cover art photo of him lounging in a rose garden. “I’m very excited to share my next album with you, especially this song because it’s a great representation of what’s to come.”
“It’s one of the hardest songs I’ve ever had to write,” he continued, “but I wrote it in hopes that you’ve gone through something similar in your life, and that it can fill in the BLANK for you like it did for me.”
Puth admitted, “I’ve never put out a song like this before- it’s very different for me,” before thanking Swift “for letting me know musically that I just couldn’t keep this on my hard drive any longer.”
Concluding the caption, Charlie thanked "all of my fans - you’ll never know how much you mean to me…"
Listen to “Hero” below.