If Jeff Beck was ‘the guitarist’s guitarist’, then it seems that Charlie Puth might be ‘the pop star’s pop star’.
Previously praised by Taylor Swift - who, in the title track from 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department, declared that “Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” - and Elton John, who said that “there is an inner Stevie Wonder in this man”, Puth has now been namechecked by PinkPantheress, who recently revealed his uncredited contribution to Angel, the song she created for the Barbie movie soundtrack.
Speaking to the Therapuss podcast, PinkPantheress recalled that Puth “randomly” came into the studio when she was working on Angel, and got himself involved.
“I’ve never been around somebody so eccentric before,” she explained. “He is, I mean, as we all know, genius. I don’t even know if I can say this but he’s kind of like AI in a person, musically - like, if you need something musically done he can calculate in his head exactly what chord that should be.”
Getting excited, PinkPantheress added: “He played a chord and I was like, ‘this might be the best chord I’ve ever heard in my life’, and we kept it in [the song]. And he was very cool, he was like ‘you know you don’t even need to credit me in the producer cuts and stuff’, and then he whisked away into the night, never to be seen again.”
Let’s hope not, as it sounds like Puth has a lot to offer, musically. “I’ve seen him play the piano and he’s got perfect pitch and he’s capable of so many different things,” Elton John told BBC Radio 5 Live in 2021, explaining that it was actually Puth who actually inspired him to make The Lockdown Sessions, the album that he released that year.
“Charlie kickstarted it all, I’m very grateful to him for that,” John revealed, explaining that they were living just a few doors from each other in Los Angeles during the Covid lockdown.
Of their duet, After All, which features on the album, John said, “I went out there with no expectations and I sat down at his electric piano and wrote a melody straight away, which is very unusual because I write to lyrics. And then he finished it off and we had a song.”
PinkPantheress, meanwhile, is preparing for her appearance at the Glastonbury Festival this weekend, which takes place on the Woodsies stage at 7.30pm on the Friday night. She had also been scheduled to perform tonight (Thursday) on the Levels stage, but this appearance has now been cancelled, with many speculating that a fear of overcrowding could be to blame.
