Charlie Puth admits his head is full of music, but, when it comes to making a new song, he has an unconventional way of starting the process.
“Beatboxing is how I draft music,” he tells the U.K. radio station Heart, using his new song “Light Switch” as an example.
“I’m thinking about what the tempo is going to be and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Okay, I want it to be fast,'” Charlie said, and recreated the song’s tempo, bass and other elements using just his mouth. “I’m coming up with it and layering it into the actual song at the same time, but by me putting it out in my mouth — that’s a weird sentence — it’s just a feasible product that I can hear back rather than just playing it in my head,” he explained.
Speaking of his new single, Charlie remembers what inspired it in the first place — ironically, it was because he had too many music ideas in his head.
Says Charlie, “I started to think to myself, ‘I’m just thinking too much. I wish I had a light switch to turn my brain off’ and then I thought, ‘Oh, that could be it!'” He then drove to the studio and recorded the sound of him turning on the light — and the rest was history.
The Grammy nominee is gearing up for his third studio album, Charlie, which he teased is his most personal and emotionally open album yet. He also admits he feels anxious about how it’ll be received.
“I’m a very nervous person,” he confessed. “I’m always thinking, ‘Where is my song gonna end up? How is the song going?’… I’m not impervious to any of that. The bigger artist I become, the more worried I get.”
A release date for Charlie is forthcoming.
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