Taylor Swift name-checked Charlie Puth and the internet is debating it

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Charlie Puth is a major Swiftie and it appears the admiration may be mutual.

Taylor Swift shouts out her fellow singer-songwriter in the title track on her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”

“You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate,” she sings in the love song. “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.”

Puth, known for such hits as “One Call Away” and singing the hook on Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again, is well-documented in his musical appreciation of Swift.

Not only has he been known to cover her songs while in concert, but in 2022 a video of him praising her musicality made the rounds.

“Sidebar, this has nothing to do with anything, but Taylor Swift is the queen of these types of chords,” he told attendees at his New York City concert as he played her song, “Teardrops on My Guitar.”

Part of the fun of any Swift album release is dissecting her lyrics and the Puth reference has stirred the Swifties.

One person posted on X, “Charlie Puth, Underrated Legend. She knows. I know,” joining a cacophony of those co-signing Swift’s apparent endorsement.

Still others saw the lyric in a less-flattering light.

“Did she call Charlie Puth a flop,” another person posted.

Puth and Swift share some connections beyond both being singer-songwriters.

His hit 2016 single “We Don’t Talk Anymore” features Swift’s good friend Selena Gomez, who has long denied that she and Puth were ever romantically involved – something he appeared to confirm by tweeting at the time that he and Gomez were just friends.

But in 2018, amid speculation that his song “Attention” was about Gomez, Puth told Billboard, “I don’t kiss and tell, but the only way a song like [“We Don’t Talk Anymore”] can come across as real is if there’s something else going on behind the scenes.”

“And that’s what was happening [with Gomez]. Very short-lived, very small, but very impactful,” he told the publication.

CNN has reached out to representatives for Puth for comment.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.