Audacy Check In vet Charlie Puth joined us once again to chat all about his new song with Dan + Shay and Sabrina Carpenter, "That's Not How This Works,” his upcoming tour, and more.
LISTEN NOW: Audacy Check In with Charlie Puth
After first briefly praising Sabrina for her incredible acting skills in his track’s short film, that even had him second guessing if she was actually really mad at him, Charlie got into how the song originally came about, and how it ended up what it currently is.
“It used to be just me,” revealing he wrote it “about two months into the pandemic on zoom… with Dan+Shay.” Then after the course of three years time and going through “lots of changes in my life, lots of changes in everybody's lives,” noting some of those changes, “I switched record labels and made a new album.” Charlie went on to say “I always had this song in my back pocket and wondered what it would be like if I kinda just revisited it.”
“So I opened it up on the computer and just updated the sounds a bit and thought ‘why not feature the guys that I wrote the song with… I bet you it will sound really natural,’ and it did,” Charlie added before getting into how detail oriented Dan is when it comes to vocal producing.
As for how the Sabrina Carpenter version got involved with the track, Charlie explained. “I’ve always wanted to have a short film go alongside a music video, and I’d say right when I thought that, two days later (after bringing up her name a week prior) one of my managers who has a really good relationship with her manager asked if she’d be interested in something like this.” Turns out “she did, and we filmed it, and it went so well I had the idea of while we were filming it to make her version of the song as well because she’s a really great artist as well as well as an actor.”
Julia then brilliantly brought up how the track reminded her of a modern day merged version of “I Don’t Want You Back” by Eamon and Frankee’s “F U Right Back,” a fact that straight up blew Charlie’s mind. Adding his two cents, Charlie noted that while lyrically he thinks his song “is a little bit nicer,” he couldn’t deny both 2004 classic one hit wonder tracks still very much slap.
Mentioning that his latest album, CHARLIE, dropped relatively recently, Julia inquired where that leaves his newest single — as part of a new project or just a stand alone song.
“So I like to sonically bridge things. The last album was like almost borderline like hyper-Pop, very fast, very synth based. I wanna kinda get back into," he started his thought, pausing to note, “I like it when things compliment each other."
“For the next project I want it to be very band oriented, like no synths… and just real instrumentation. But I feel like I can't just come out of nowhere and just drop the project. I need to come out with a song that's kind of a hybrid of both. So on ‘That’s Not How This Works’ maybe that’s the bridge song leading us into the next, I don’t want to say era, because there’s another artist that’s using that term and I don’t want to steal their fire. Not that I would,” he softly quipped.
Charlie also talked about his upcoming 'CHARLIE' LIVE EXPERIENCE tour, and its theatrical aspects. Noting, “it’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before, and it involves a lot of risk, but I’m willing to take it.”
For more from Charlie Puth, check out the full interview above.
Listen to Charlie Puth Radio and more on the free Audacy app
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow Audacy
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram