Charlie Puth Explains How 1 Taylor Swift Lyric Inspired His New Album

Charlie Puth is crediting Taylor Swift for helping him grow.

Puth, whose album “Whatever’s Clever” comes out March 27, says the “Opalite” singer inspired him after she dropped his name in the 2024 song “The Tortured Poets Department” from her album of the same name.

“We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist,” she sang.

“That’s the lyric that inspired this album,” Puth told Willie Geist in a preview clip of the upcoming March 8 edition of Sunday Sitdown.

“Bigger artist means that you have to open up,” he added.

The “One Call Away” singer says Swift’s abilities as a singer and songwriter help her connect with others. He took her name-checking him as a reminder for him to evolve.

“That’s why millions of people can relate to her,” he said. “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 that can of worms.”

“You don’t hear that as, like, ‘He’s so talented, he should be even more popular than he is.’ You thought, she wants you to be a different kind of artist,” Geist clarified.

Puth agreed and said his takeaway from that lyric could benefit other artists, as well.

“Yeah, and it would be advice that I would pass down to other artists, too,” he said. “It’s a good push to hear that in a song.”

Puth has spoken about being mentioned in “The Tortured Poets Department” before.

“I appreciate the compliment,” he said on TODAY with Hoda & Jenna in 2024. “I take it as a compliment.”

He called Swift’s shoutout “inspiring” and said it gave him pause about his own approach to songwriting.

“It made me think about different ways to write songs and her way of writing, being almost overly-detailed, in the music. I’m like, ‘I wonder if I can do a little bit of that, too,’” he said before adding at the time that he’s “working on it.”