The 32-year-old musician dropped the single ” on Friday after hinting at its release earlier in the week. On Tuesday, Puth explained that a “hero” is about witnessing someone you love harm themselves and destroy the good things in their life but feeling to help them.
“It’s one of the hardest songs I’ve ever had to write, but I wrote it in hopes that you’ve gone through something similar in your life, and that it can fill in the BLANK for you as it did for me,” he said in an Instagram post. “I’m very excited to share my next album with you, especially this song because it’s a great representation of what’s to come.”
Puth claimed that Taylor Swift inspired him to release the song.
A friend of Puth’s who had heard a leak from Swift’s Tortured Poets Department called him at lunchtime last month to tell him that Swift had named him in one of the songs. Puth didn’t think much of it. “My thinking went to, ‘Oh, like during an interview or something. That’s fantastic. I adore Taylor Swift,” he declares to Rolling Stone.
Then he wondered whether the music and the claimed shout-out—”You smoked, then ate seven bars of chocolate/We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist”—were AI-generated. “I’m going to wake up tomorrow and realize it was all a giant joke played on me because someone believes I shouldn’t be a larger artist, so get the biggest musician since the Beatles to say I should be a greater artist. “Ha ha ha!” he thought.
When the album was released. Puth was brushing his teeth before going to bed when he hit play on the title track (“The song’s in C major,” he says in typical Puth way). He was shaken. “My initial reaction was, ‘Wow. She mentioned my name. “She pronounced it like P-O-O-T-H,” he claims. “And I just cried, dude.”
“It was surreal because it’s never good to look back, but I feel like I could have done things a little differently in the past, but it’s all meant to happen now,” he continues.
Here’s what Puth has to say about his favorite Swift lyric, his collaboration with Matty Healy, and who he believes should be a larger musician.
Swift’s shout-out and stamp of approval pushed Puth to release “Hero,” a song that deviates from his tendency to overproduce his tunes and leans into Swift’s masterful direct-to-paper songwriting.
According to Puth, the approach was extremely Swift-like in the sense that it’s an emotional tale that listeners must pay attention to, rather than a flawless pop song with layered sounds that everyone can bop along to in their vehicle.
The “Marvin Gaye” singer said he was hesitant to release “Hero” before Swift announced his identity to the world.
“I’d argue that if Taylor hadn’t mentioned me, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to make such a bold remark.”I know,” Puth said of the song, which is about watching someone you care about make poor mistakes and giving support, if not a life-saving remedy.
The artist went on to say that he would not generally go as intimate and “hyper-specific” on a song as Swift does, particularly on her most recent album.
Puth hasn’t seen Swift in person since the song’s release, but she sent her a message stating, “This means more, and I will take this newfound courage to put this new body of work out.”
He was working on “Hero” before the shout-out, “but I was just uncertain, and it’s wonderful to have a stamp of approval from an artist you’ve adored for so long and continue to do so.
“Hero” is Puth’s second single of 2024, after his collaboration with K-pop duo Stray Kids on “Lose My Breath,” starring Charlie Puth.
He released his most recent album, Charlie, in October 2022.
