See Charlie Puth Break Down Emotional Hit Song, ‘Attention’
Since Charlie Puth released “Attention,” the emotional first single from his upcoming album Voice Notes, this year, it has shot into the Top 5 and it has been certified platinum, thanks in part to the way he stacked hook upon hook.
The singer-songwriter and pop star recently welcomed Rolling Stone into his studio to explain how he wrote “Attention” and his general process for Voice Notes, which he named after the iPhone’s Voice Memo app, which he calls his “number-one songwriting tool.”
“I record instruments, I record shakers and pianos on here and I put them directly into the session,” he says. “‘Attention’ was the first song for the album, and it started out as this really sad, depressing piano ballad – as most of my songs start out as – and then they become groovy, fun pop songs.”
He then played the original voice memos he made to show the progression of how it transitioned from something depressing into a hit that could be played in a club.
Elsewhere in his conversation with Rolling Stone, he talks about how he feels about using drops as devices in pop songs, what he took from disco for inspiration and the quandary of including acoustic guitar in a pop song.
Although no release date has been announced yet for Voice Notes, the album is expected to come sometime this fall.