Charlie Puth

Welcome welcome welcome to armchair expert. I have Dak Shepherd and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. You may have seen our guest But a mere two Sundays ago. Yeah. Yeah, Charlie Puth. Charlie Puth is a Grammy nominated singer songwriter musician and record producer is albums are nine track mind voice notes Charlie and he has a new album out March 27th very special birthday called whatever's clever. This was so funny. You get to hear the way his brain works musically and it is shocking. It's so fast. Beautiful mind desk. Yes. Yeah, please enjoy Charlie Puth We are supported by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses Monica only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out. Yeah, or a pain for a coffee that's one fifth full point is you miss a lot unless you use HubSpot their customer platform gives you access to the data You need to grow your business the insights trapped in emails call logs and transcripts all that unstructured data that makes all the difference Because when you know more you grow more and when you get a full cup of coffee you can do more too But I digress visit hubspot.com today This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online When we were building the armchair expert website rob actually use Squarespace to get it up and running Which was a smart choice because they've got everything you need in one place to create something that actually looks professional What really stands out is their blueprint AI feature It's like having a design assistant that helps you build a site that doesn't look like every other cookie cutter template out there Answer a few questions about what you're trying to do and it creates something that actually fits your vision If you're someone who offers services whether that's coaching consulting creative work whatever Squarespace handles all the business stuff too payment processing scheduling client management No more juggling five different platforms just to get paid for what you do the whole thing is designed so you can focus on your actual work Instead of wrestling with website tech which let's be honest most of us would rather avoid So head to squarespace.com slash dax for a free trial and when you're ready to launch use code dax to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain He's in Hi there nice to meet you Hey, this is the greatest fucking setup ever she's Oh, that is kind well part is on to you live in I live in Santa Barbara. Oh my goodness I lived there for one year as a college student are you a monocedo? Mm-hmm. I say Santa Barbara because it sounds a little cooler. Wow You're afraid it sounds bougie to live in it is bougie Although yesterday was a very unmonicito day for me tell him I saw this dog running down San Ecedro it's a little fluffy hyperalogenic little pup. Okay, maybe like a doodle mix It's like a little doodle mix running like cars. There's no police in the fucking town. Sure The dog's running he's gonna get hit by a car. I throw the hazard on my pregnant wife We were going to pick up her car and I'm like we're not doing it right now I've run out in the street and picked this dog up put him in the back seat and then two hours of really intense looking for the owner They didn't have a little tag on it did but this is the most California shit ever it led to a business manager I swear to the dogs business manager I think dogs business manager A humane society the guy picked up yawning. Hello I'm like I found this dog but there's no owner attached to the tag. Do you know who's dog is this my And may I ask who's calling? I'm like okay some Yes, emergency would be nice emergency here my wife's car is ready for pickup. Yeah. Don't you have any idea how important this is But anyway, you just kind of answered one of my questions Which is you were brutally attacked by a dog as a child and I did wonder if it went to a permanent fear of dogs Because I have one. Did you get bit by a dog? Yeah, these two dobermans ran off a porch when I was a kid And I was across the street and they jumped on top of me and the owner came I didn't suffer any permanent but blocked it. It scared the shit out of me. Yeah Well, who's your attacker? It was a black lab and it was when I was two years old So I don't really remember a whole lot of it. Okay, but your parents must have shit bricks. I almost died really If you look really closely Well, I would you look super close up to my face. We just met but It's Exit your chair In 1992 400 stitches at this area was really tough at the time 400 got your eye to take your hole. No, it didn't it's got one centimeter away So I got really lucky, but what's really funny is I love dogs in 2019 I adopted a black lab you have Followed with your oppressor With presser I am imagining your face probably for a minute your parents must have thought oh my god He's never gonna look the same where you pretty deformed up top for a while I was I was pretty bandaged up for a while up until a couple weeks ago Just the type of the plot we needed a story Till like four years old and did you have more than one surgery? I think multiple surgeries I very vaguely remember going to the hospital. She has a huge dog phobia Yeah, I don't like dogs at all and I'm fine saying it That's fine My wife does not like dogs either that dog I mentioned lives with my parents now Okay, are you self-conscious about your eyes still like do you still sometimes feel I like it if I didn't have it I'm just like a white guy with brown hair, but I'm more self-conscious about and I was just talking somebody about this my voice I'm really self-conscious about Singing oh, you're singing It's my job what version of self-conscious you personally don't like the sound of it or you think other people don't You ever hear people say I don't like the way that my voice sounds well your voice sounds different Recorded then it does to you because 70% of your voice is actually the vibration that's happening all around your head So when I listen back to this I'm always gonna sound it I'm now used to it, but people who aren't used to it are just hearing the remaining 30% of just audible Yes, so I've always heard this and I guess I don't have a memory of hearing my voice You're going like what but my voice to me and my head sounds exactly as it does if I listen to this show You probably hear your speaking voice recorded a lot Yeah, in many forms of media more than most more than most so you're probably used to it in a way But you think I would be Jeff Gold will mess me to come sing at his show with the Trubidor the other night Because I just happen to be in town. He plays clarinet. What's he play? He plays piano. He's okay close That's what he can't win who plays the clarinet. Let's just not confuse them I went up there. I sing pop music for a living. I'm not used to singing jazz standards and I felt very naked up there and I didn't have my piano behind me and for the first 30 seconds And I've been doing this for not a whole long time, but like 10 years my voice is shaking a little bit because I'm nervous But I guess it's good that I still care. Yeah, and how long does it take to settle in? It took up until like the first chorus because the audience is really great too. They were very excited Yeah, they're not haters at a Jeff Gold Bloom jazz concert. I've experienced a couple haters But when I first started touring too sure, but I'm saying if you're the type of person that loves Jeff Gold Bloom's jazz band I think you've already weeded out the haters. Does that make sense? Yeah, that does make sense actually You're reaching a very niche audience. They care about him a lot though. Yeah But I don't think the fear goes away even if the circumstances perfect That is true. I just know from doing stand-up. It is Impossible the difference between different rooms like people who go to Largo They love comedy. They're gonna love whatever they see. They're into it like being in a punk rock So they love it their junkies. Whereas you perform in Vegas and it's like And I'm sure why they went to this show they have lost money They're from different parts of the country. You know, it's a disaster same material Stand-up I think is the hardest job. It's the most scary I would say for sure because you have Other than maybe some intro music walking on stage I have music behind me the entire time exactly if you're doing just okay Presumably the music will be so enjoyable Right, but if you're shooting the bed in comedy there's nothing else going on Especially if like remember Brian Regan He doesn't curse in his act at all and he still makes me belly laugh I remember Seeing videos of Sam Kinnison and just the like dice and the almost borderline awkward silence that would happen But it was all part of the art of it all it's like the silence was just as important As the words that were being said breaking that tension to do that without music if I had a keyboard here I have like a bed of white noise I can play over and then the words come out easier You have nothing you have the sound of laughter a lot of respect Have you ever done an acapella thing live? I made acapella music with boys to men. Okay, great. They're good at it They're pretty good at it and they're a little better than me We did that on my second album that was 144 vocal tracks and you're having to fine tune levels on 140 tracks Every detail matters they know how to sing but in order to get like a full sound will record one vocal and then Put the microphone back a little bit Say it again like same piece of music say it again Put the microphone back because the most important thing while recording is capturing the air of the room Even if that air conditioner was on you know how when they're like oh 10 seconds for room Yeah, yeah, yeah, the tone is just important as whoever singing whoever is playing an instrument because the tone kind of sets the stage for The record you know record called what's going on by Marvin Gaye? Marvin Gaye always had a lot of question marks in his music sure sure sure But Marvin Gaye what's going on in the very beginning of that record? It sounds like a party if you can kind of play it in your head people are talking. Hey, what's happening? It's the one that's famously was ripped off right that's the track not that song. I'm talking about the original. Okay Oh, yeah, he's here in the very beginning here a bed of noise It's just a bunch of people having a party and that plays throughout the song when the music comes in that's the bed of noise Oh, I want to lose anybody here No, this is fascinating. We like expertise here. So that was perfect Do you know the famous story about Lads up when I want to say Lads up when two that album They rented this crazy English estate and Bonham set up his kit in this huge Vacuous stairwell and all the drum tracks on that album are so wild sounding because they're in this weird echoey chamber And he played so hard. Well, that's what reverb. I didn't know that by the way, but that makes sense It's in the nature's reverb nature's reverb is reverb you go to blackbird studio in Nashville They have a room. It's like the size of this but the ceiling is like 40 feet And they record guitars in there you can of course capture that synthetically with computer plugins Believe in pedals right? I mean, yes, so many guitar pedals that do reverb, but those are all replicated from the real thing which is Reverb. I mean, this is a pretty tight sounding room because we're recording The show it's no better with a ton of reverb. I got scared as like you put it to the test What if we heard all this echo? If your show did have a ton of reverb He got a cool I guess I can see Jack White doing a podcast where it had a ton of reverb. Yeah Radio shows in New Jersey where I'm from always had there was this morning show that had a ton of reverb on it New Jersey 101.1 WCBS FM. They had a radio show in the 90s I can't remember the name of the host, but they always sounded like they were in one of those tunnels Okay, yes, you're from New Jersey. Yes, and I'm imagining your semi close to manhattan as you commuted at one point and like an hour away And what kind of town is it? Brumson. It's like a business town It kind of would remind somebody of Connecticut something like 7,000 people can take a boat into South Street, Wall Street Not a very musical town, but a very nice town fancy Fancy little Yeah, but interesting because it's on a peninsula. So I grew up on the beach. Oh, yeah, another headline I Like it there. I haven't been back in a long time, but close to Asbury Park, which is where Bruce belief Bruce is from there Okay, and do people commute by boat into the city? They do. Oh my gosh. That would be so fun It's not a nice boat. It's like a fair. It's like a big cat and ran ferry where they served vodka at five o'clock in the morning That's good for those walls. That's when you know the market is down Like it's a real bear market. Everyone's pounding vodka a very unmusical town But everyone in New Jersey is their own vocal celebrity So I had the guy who played the beach clubs with his acoustic guitar would teach me music And I had a guitar teacher that was the best guitar teacher in town He was known as being like best guitar teacher in town You know the thing in Detroit was is everyone you met had an uncle who had played in Bob Seagars band Oh, the silver band and everyone you met Uncle was in the silver band which obviously numerically couldn't be possible Right, but your town had a thing. Yeah Bob Seagars was the king or Ted Nugent But no one ever claimed have played in Ted Nugent's band for whatever reason. Oh, that's sad every small town has a thing It's interesting and the thing in my town was like someone's own nose Bruce. Which means I know Bruce Yeah, sure Bruce Franksees got to be god there. So mom was a music teacher. What's her music background? She just always loved music and she was my first piano teacher four years old. Yeah, for it. Wow. Yeah There's more coming Do you taught me when I was four years old then I went to other teachers who would make you read music That's how you learn to play you read the music and you play what's on the page? I'm on the tackle that part of it because she knew that I had this special ability to hear a song Back then with tapes and CDs This is a CD in my mind I would listen to it and I'd memorize it and then I'd be able to play it back You could just play it Was just from listening to it. Did she think she had like a fucking prodigy on her hands? I think so I definitely won't call myself that but kind of like how you're spitting out facts about me right now Because you read a sheet or you went online and you memorized them. That's the same Way I always approach sound from a young age I thought that was just part of being human or like you study for a vocabulary test You're gonna memorize a definition of whatever letharah Plethora Mulsated words Yeah, that's a corn of copia Go on a copia. I'm gonna memorize the definition of that Horn of plenty. That's the definition absolutely You pass the vocabulary test But I always equated sound as something physical that you could hold or see You've had synesthesia It's kind of like that. It's a little like that. I don't see any colors though like I don't look at this nice Forest green wall and think well that sounds like a Frank Ocean song I just look at music very literally like I would listen to buy buy buy buy in sync and be like okay That's an a flat minor and Mm-hmm, and then the pre-course goes the image If I had a piano I'd play it and is that pleasurable for you? Or is it a maddening? Yeah, pleasurable I beg your cracking the code. I think music can move any room. This is why I write music. I've always wanted to be responsible for changing the vibe in any room if there needed to be a vibe change. Or make something sadder if it was that time of the show. Now I play shows. You know how musicians always an hour and a half into the show. That's when acoustic guitar comes out. I'm like, all right, we're gonna slow things down a little bit now. We're gonna give everyone a little break so that we can go fucking hard for that encore, right? We need to recharge. Hit the snare. Boom. Da-da-da-da. And you're right back into it, Phil Collins, Genesis. It's a studio. Exactly. Can you imagine like four slow songs and then you hear a studio just out of nowhere. It just makes you want to get up on your chair. How did you make people get up out of their chair? You hit the first... Bipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipip was making a living, but he went to this Bob Seeger concert and he was with a friend of his or a producer and he said, I want to play to an arena like this. Like what is this guy doing that I'm not doing? And he said he's writing ballads and you're not writing any ballads. And he came home after watching Bob Seeger and he wrote Purple Rain. Wow. Wrote some of it. Then he went to a club and he played it and he improbed this like 25 minutes session of that song and kept the pieces that ended up in that song, which is a very long song. I want to say it's like an eight or nine minute song, but weirdly inspired by seeing the success of Bob Seeger and then cracking that he needed to do ballads. What's that thing called that people do they write it down? Manifestation. I think a lot of musicians' manifestation is just through sound. Yeah. What I like about it too is I think we have these really fantastical notions of genius and it's just like, oh, Prince knew how to be Prince. No, Prince knew how to do something. Then he saw Bob Seeger and then incorporated that and then probably 80 other things he incorporated. The genius of Prince was that he knew what to subtract. And sometimes I have trouble doing I had to remind myself that because without getting to muzzle musical because I know that everybody that listens and watches isn't listening to music 24 7. Charlie, you're way too concerned with what people are. I am going to be interested in. You let me know about that. Okay. You'll be passionate about what you're passionate about. This is the place to get a little geeky. Yeah. Okay. I love it. Remember, kiss by Prince. Mm-hmm. There used to be. There used to be an acoustic guitar in that song. There's no. There might be one buried in the track at the very end, but right now it's just. Mm-hmm. It's just drums and the little background vocals like overdubbed. But there was an acoustic guitar layered in there. And Prince was like, there's too much going on. The side chain compressed keyed the acoustic guitar to a high hat. And then the rhythm that the high hat was playing, you know, that sound of a drum high. Yeah. Yeah. Every time the drummer hit the high hat, the acoustic guitar sound would trigger, which is how you got the. It's the high hat. Oh, wow. There's what I mean. That's the high hat, but the acoustic guitar is like opening up every time the high hat gets hit. Wow. Okay, so mom got ya under the piano. It's funny though that she turned you over to somebody because I keep hearing from people. The good advice for parents is do not try to teach your kids shit. Just turn them over to a pro because kids don't want to learn from their parents. Really? Did you like learning from mom? I loved learning from my parents and my dad, he's a builder and appreciates music, but isn't in it every day like I am. And I would just love asking him questions like, what's a foundation to a house? How do you know when it's ready to be painted? I've such a soft moroc understanding of how a house to this day, I still really don't understand it. He not make you get out there and fucking clean up the side and run cable. One time he made me do it because I cheated on a math test. Oh, punishment. And I had to clean all day and I was so miserable. I was just kicking the dirt, making little rhythms out of my feet. He came back to the house. It was completely dirty instead. It's like this kid's fucking. I think if you know, if you know, your kid is going to do something. Is R.C.? Yeah, you're not going to be like, build this house, please. Well, I think my parents knew I was R.C. and musical when I went to Catholic school, which meant I went to Catholic church that was kind of the deal. And I would hear the same music, holy, holy, holy Lord, I would hear the same music over every Sunday, sometimes three times a week. And back to the thing where I could hear a song and just memorize it, the thing that I thought everybody could do. I remember one day, the church organist didn't show up. And I looked at everybody and I'm like, don't put the tape on. I memorized it because I heard it so many times and everyone looked at me like an alien. This was 11. Okay, great. Yeah. 11 or 12. Well, it could make a service better than a cute little 11-year-old popping up and filling in on the organ. And everyone's like, what do you mean you memorized it? Get out of here, freak. He's been touched by the devil. Yes. Yes. I played the whole mass from memory. It wasn't like a cocky thing. I was just like, I've heard enough times I know how to do it, right? Everybody. And my parents were like, okay, we're going to go get your brain tested. Yeah. See what's going on up there. And then I went to school in New York City. Well, jazz enters the equation at seven or 10, 10 years old. Good. Thank you. And then you go to jazz camp, right? You go to a count-basis. Went to count-basis theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, home of count-basis. That's why I say New Jersey is low-key musical. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What does jazz do as a medium for you? Because I guess what I'm curious about right now, it sounds like your musical journey is like, I can hear this. I can replicate it. It's pleasurable to be able to execute that. But when does passion enter it or when does curiosity enter it? The moment pop music was introduced into my life. When I say pop music, I meant pop music of the 70s. Like when my parents were kids listening to James Taylor. I remember hearing Caroline in my mind by James Taylor and then hearing Aluther Vandross records on the R&B side of things. But I just called it pop music. And then in the early 2000s, I'd hear Lucky by Britney Spears and just hearing those Max Martin drums and the very Swedish-type songwriting and kind of combining everything together. Because the pop music that made me realize, oh, I want to make the music that moves people. Because my parents put on this James Taylor record and it made the car ride so much better to North Jersey. Yeah. In my mind, I'm going to Carolina. Okay, so pop is what gets you kind of on fire. I'm listening to jazz and thinking, I'm going to learn as much jazz as I can and marry it into pop music. And then I've found out that I was not the first to have that idea. It was all of Quincy Jones' music. When you were in class, not with your mom, when you went to another teacher. And I know this is going to be hard for you because you don't want to brag, but was the teacher like, dude, you got a real gift. Yeah, they did say that. How did you know that I have such a fear of bragging? Until you're so sweet. I think you're very cognizant of what people think of you. Sometimes to a fault, I'm getting better at it. I think a lot of people take my, like, if someone sings off key, I just don't know how to not win. It's involuntary. A 34. I'm getting a lot better at it. It's almost like a nervous tick a little bit. Sure. But I think people obviously would get offended by that. Sure. That's different then. Well, that's different. But I understand you're like, I'm hurting people's feelings and I don't mean to be hurting people's feelings. I don't want people to think I'm a bad person or something. Can people like, read you the wrong way and then you feel bad about it? Yeah. That's a whole different thing to go down. I definitely think people have read me the wrong way. But I don't know. Didn't people find Mozart annoying? Not that I'm comparing myself to Mozart. No problem. I think musical geniuses of Enraffang's would be exception of a few. Oh, just a question. I'm going to say Reffang's. I think people think, like, oh, these pop stars, they put you in a box. They think you're going to be whatever they think. And then if you're not that, they're either disappointed or they're like, oh, he's an asshole or everyone has to come up with their idea of you. 2014, when I signed my record contract, I had all intentions of coming to Los Angeles to produce music for other artists. I didn't think that I was going to be the artist. So then overnight, I became the artist after the song, Steve, again, being in the Fast and Furious movie and having a couple of my own singles, suddenly I'm the artist. But I just became an artist overnight. And I had a lot of not great people advising me incorrectly, say this to garner up this fake controversy. And that way people will like your music. So every classic music industry faux pas, I think I fell into. Yeah. I have a bad business manager. Oh, you know we're going to get there. We're going to get there on a earmarked that. But my defense of it, what makes an incredible musician is that they see and hear something new that no one else saw and heard. And to think that that person gets to have that experience all a car, like only when it serves them, you have to recognize they're operating at a little bit outside of the thing, which allows them to tap into something we wouldn't have thought of. That's what it's about. And I think you've seen a lot of musicians over the years treat the angst that comes with that with losing drugs. Like most of our great geniuses, they're medicating. So it's a lot to ask someone to be a visionary. And then for the rest of the day, just be normal. It's not how it works. Wow. I feel like a lot of artists would appreciate you saying that too because you get all this success. No one really wants to hear about your problems. But should I imagine hearing everything at 200% volume? Yeah. That's what I hear every single day. I get really startled. Like my poor wife, she came in and I was working on something. I was working on it really, really loud. And she said, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, and I turned around. She really startled me. And I just really silently. She was like, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you and I just started crying. I don't know why. Hey, you're sensitive, dude. But like, I get down on myself because I'm about to have a kid and I want to freak the kid out. No, your kid will probably be sensitive. And if you're someone who embraces it and is not ashamed of it and can be an example that you can totally be a sensitive person and live in this world, it's not a correct thing. It's right. Let the kids see it's okay to be exactly how you're going to take a tree out of all the trees. I'm sensitive too. It's your eucalyptus tree over here. Princess like freaky all the time. Of course he is. And he's on opiates. Yeah, of course he is. You're not getting that whole volume of work. I think I maybe in the beginning of tour, Dabbled in like having a drink after a show, but thank God I never got into any of that because my brain already feels like it's on drugs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, without anything. It's a lot to be on stage. It's kind of depressing sometimes. Having just got off stage where 50,000 people are cheering you on and then you just maybe have like two days off and you're jet lagged. You might be in a different country, different state. And you're searching for that dopamine hit. It's literally chemical though. It's not even like, oh, it's like an emotional, it's chemical. The adrenaline is high and then it wipes out very quickly. Your body is trying to figure out a way to get some homeostasis. It's like, I'll drink a little bit to get back up to even. Yeah, even a few weeks ago, post-goal then gloves. It had like a decompress. It's like, okay, that was a lot of attention. And that's a very heightened arousal setting. And now what? Maybe that's why people stay kind of central in the LA where it's always something to get a hit from. Yeah. Boy, that's dark. Okay. So back to school. Now, I'm imagining you're living two different worlds. Anytime you're pursuing music, you're probably loved and appreciated. And then the transition to school, no one gives a fuck at school that you have this gift, right? There were a lot of teachers that didn't like me. There were people who were supportive. There was one band teacher named Clem de Rose, I believe he's passed on 10 years ago. And he used to work with Nelson Riddle and Count Basie and lead the big band. And my mom and my dad were always my biggest supporters. They were like, you need to do this audition and play all the things you are. You are known as this is string time. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, those chord changes like all nice and how David Foster plays the piano, how Bill Evans plays the piano. He used to do this for this guy in New Jersey on a Tuesday afternoon. And I got into the jazz camp. And it was like my biggest accomplishment ever. He was very supportive. I met a couple teachers who weren't so supportive. What about Imagine your peers there? They like your talent because they're other musical kids. But then you're going to a New Jersey elementary school and junior high and I can't imagine there. Right. That's what I'm saying. Like are you popping back and forth into a place you're appreciated and then a place where you're suffering? I'm popping back and forth. I never suffered. Just no one really understood me in high school. I heard you were a bit bullied. A teensy bit. Never shoved in lockers or anything like that. Just a lot of emotional distress that I might still carry with me. The needing to please people constantly and having a fury of talking too much that might have started in high school. But I also enjoyed high school. It wasn't the worst thing in the world for me. I just preferred being in the music world. Yeah. Yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. We are supported by all state. Checking all state first could save you hundreds on car insurance. That's smart. Not checking which platform you watch that new show on. So frustrating. 15 minutes later you've logged into seven apps. Reset two passwords and still haven't found it. Yeah. Checking first is smart. So check all state first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with all state. Potential savings vary subject to terms conditions and availability. All state North American insurance co-infiliates North Brick Illinois. We are supported by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses Monica only use 20% of their data. That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out. Yeah, or a pain for a coffee that's one fifth full. Yuck. Point is you miss a lot unless you use HubSpot. Their customer platform gives you access to the data. You need to grow your business. The insights trapped in emails, call logs and transcripts, all that unstructured data that makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more. And when you get a full cup of coffee, you can do more too. But I digress. Visit HubSpot.com today. Okay, so you're also incredibly ambitious. So there's a lot of different things going on because you make your own Christmas tape at 11 years old and you go door to door and sell it. In Microsoft Word 97 print out all the little CD labels. Yeah. And I was always obsessed with making an album, seeing the celebrity and synch CD, seeing the Millennium Backstreet Boy CD. I wanted to make an album not for myself, but for other artists. And at 17, this is also kind of ambitious. So at 17 you start a YouTube channel. Yeah. Charlie's vlogs. This was the day and age of Tumblr and vlogging. That was a whole era. That was a whole era and going to VidCon, meeting up with creators. I still am in contact with today. I fell in love with the internet and I noticed in the early days of YouTube there was a lack of musicianship. It was all sketch comedy, smosh. And those guys are still around today too, killing it. But there was a lack of musicians. So I thought why not make some homemade music videos. It sounds stupid because everybody does that now on TikTok. But nobody was doing it back then. Yeah. But the ambition part is you're not only doing your own vlog with your own comedy sketches in your own. You're doing a lot of acoustic covers. Yeah. But then you start creating jingles and music for other people's YouTube shows, right? Most of the time not because I wanted a pair of Ray Bans. And I didn't want to ask my parents for money. Sometimes if the YouTube channel had a lot of subscribers when subscribers meant something, I would just ask for them to shout me out on their channel and then I would get subscribers. So I was writing a lot of music for a lot of random people at the time. Yeah. You get into Berkeley School of Music. And if everyone else is dumb as me, that is not Berkeley out here. That's Berkeley and Boston. No, you used to prize a lot of people get confused. I thought, oh, you went to Berkeley and I was like, why is it spelt with two ease and not a why? And then I realized, oh, it's a very prestigious music school. Boston Music School. Yeah. It's a music school in the back bay and Boston, Massachusetts. I had so much fun there. Did you feel seen there? I did. Like you found your crew. I found my crew. What's funny is I always kind of danced around the classes. I'm sure they would hate to hear that, but I wasn't learning how rap cables. I have a music production and engineering degree, which is great, but I never went to the beginnings of that class. A good example is I knew I didn't have to book studio time at three o'clock in the morning to record a drummer. I could just go on YouTube and with this program called Isotope, isolate the drums out of this one song, put them on the grid and prod tools. And then take someone else's assignment and layer it on top of it. And now it sounds like I went to the studio at three o'clock in the morning, but I don't have bags under my eyes. Wow. What cover gets Ellen's attention? September of 2011, that was the someone like you, the Adele song, the cover of that. And it's so funny. I ran into the producer a couple hours ago who actually called me and said that I was going on that program. At the time, not Andy. No, not Andy. Her name's Ellen Rockamora. Oh, yeah. We know she's so sweet. She is the sweetest. She called me at 19 years old and was like, we want to fly you out on JetBlue. Oh. I was like, woo, I still love JetBlue. To Los Angeles and I stayed at the Sheridan Universal. Sure. Off Lancersham, I think. Classic. And I was like, wow, I've never been in such a nice hotel or September. It was getting cold in New England, but it was warm here. It's our hottest month. I couldn't believe it. And I remember Jimmy Iving, Larry Jackson, Ellen. This is again, 2011, officially a long time ago saying, would you like to be signed to a record contract? To 11-11. Yeah. Did you know that was the name of God? You know everything. Well, she loves 11-11. So does my wife. She loves 11-11. It's the number. Yeah. And Aniston, too. And Tattoo Dunn. It's a good club to be in the 11-11 club. We're missing the train, I think. We're getting on the job. I got dropped from 11-11. Oh, no. Whoops. And then Emily Luther. Luther. Good. She was singing it with you, right? Yeah, yeah. She was a student at the time at Berkeley. She sang the song with me. She's from Rhode Island. I haven't thought about that in a long time. Yeah. And so you get signed based on having come on the show and sang with Emily. Yeah. As like a duet. I was like, okay, cool. But this is the part of my life where I've still lined myself like I didn't want to be an artist. I was like, I'll just be the producer and she'll be the artist. So then in 2012, I went to Malibu and made a not so great sounding album that I don't think anyone will hear it. And she would sing it and sounded good. But I remember the producer. It was like, why don't you stay an extra week and work on the tracks with me. And I was like, oh my god, I was salivating because it was beautiful and it was beautiful and maybe fall in love with California. You had all the toys at your disposal. Oh my god. I've never been in such a nice studio. And overlook the ocean went to Nobu Malibu. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. To Booy Sushi, is that still thing anymore? Oh my god. No Booy Sushi, but yeah, Nobu Malibu. That's still a thing. That's the first hit's free kind of drawing. Absolutely. My mind was blown. So that didn't end up happening. I went back to college and ended up graduating. Were you crestfallen with the result of that? I was not devastated because I was so excited to experience junior year of college. Oh, okay. That's kind of like a cocky little shit. I was like, I'm on TV. Yeah. I was feeling myself a little bit hurt. Did he do anything on campus? Were girls more interested in you? I think so. Yeah, sure. It worked. It normally does work. Yeah. It's pretty effective. Every classic male singer, everything ever. Everyone was like, wow, Charlie has 100,000 YouTube subscribers. I kind of had for a brief amount of time a very inflated ego, I would say. Yeah. Because I didn't have that in high school. He's odd man out a little bit, the man on the side. And I was stoked. I sold a show. 200 people showed up. Like real fans and all from Massachusetts showed up at this little cafe. And I was like, wow, I just sold out a show. It was a good time. He denied yourself that what's the fucking point? I mean, you should go through all the, you got to feel it. Post getting booted from 11-11. You had a bit of doldrums between the Allen excitement, the selling out the show, graduating and then pit books. That's 2015. You know, the thing about going to a music college that a lot of people's cluffs with it are that you get your degree and then it's kind of like, now what? I don't really believe you necessarily need a piece of paper to say that you're a musician. You just come to Nashville or here. But I had my piece of paper and I moved back home and I was like, okay, I should just do what I was doing before when I got dropped from the inner scope label. I will just go into every publisher on Broadway in New York City and I will pitch my music. And I waited outside a record label's doors, even the record label that I'm signed to now, Atlantic Records. I would wait out maybe five hours. I would meet people at this random studio in Brooklyn. I would just go anywhere where I could make music and then go back to my parents' house at like midnight and take that boat and I was talking about before. I have a couple of Augusto-Lise. Yeah. Couple whiskey showers. And just get back to editing and just hope that someone would cut my song, meaning sing my song. And one day I got an email from an artist and repertoire director on Coangabola Vard. And they invited me out to that studio and I just wrote C. Wigan. It's kind of an anticlimactic end to that story. Well, no pit bulls in there. He wasn't physically there. Right. That happened like a couple days after. Oh, after. Now, the funny thing about that song, if I'm remembering, it was called Celebrate. Yes, it is. I only wrote one line. I wrote tonight we're making history. Because history didn't rhyme with celebrate. I was like, oh, just say like history. Now it rhymes with celebrate. Yeah. That was my contribution to the song. Okay. Okay. So maybe, okay. Damn, I haven't heard people bring that one up in a long time. I would go down memory lane. That's to be confused. Celebrate. Yeah. It would feel so hard if we took a holiday. That's what it said. What if she had said incorporated history and celebrate history? That was a genius. You speak of level of songwriting there. But I'd say my biggest first contribution to someone's career artistically was for artist named Tray songs. It was called slow motion and it was made for the club. I had just written C. Wigan, which is a piano ballad. Yeah. And then slow motion. Just gotten out of the studio with DJ Mustard. He was going on his run. I had gotten a snap from him and I put this club record together. My discography is all over the place. Yeah. That's so cool. So when you did C. Wigan, again, your aim at that point was to be a songwriter and a producer. So how do you end up? You had sang a demo, I guess, for that. I sung the demo. And what was described to me is that nobody could capture the original feeling of the demo. Right. And the person who came closest to it was Chris Brown. I remember hearing that and really liking it. But at the end, I swear I think it was Vin Diesel's call that he wanted me on the song. Such a weird story. Yes. I think he vouched for me. I don't know if that's a hundred percent. See, from New Jersey. I don't think he feels like he's from New Jersey. I think he's a manager from New Jersey. I'm just like going into the corners of my brain of useless information. That's how I ended up on the song. And it was so last minute we were filming a music video a week before the movie was set to come out. And I wasn't even originally in the video. They had to do a second shoot day because that's the day the movie company was like, oh, he's in it now. He needs to be in the music video. Okay. See now that you're singing on it, do you quickly readjust your game plan? Yeah. I'm like, now I'm an artist. Great. Now, that song is enormous three Grammy nominations, a Golden Globe nomination. And now you're really off to the races. You're signed with Lanark at this point. I'm signed to Atlantic at this point. Everybody wants to write with me. When they say overnight, I felt it overnight. It was actually kind of overwhelming. Well, that's what I'm so curious about is that's a lot to readjust to. And you're young. Yeah, I was 23. I suddenly had money to go get an apartment on 7950 West Sunset Boulevard, the corner of sunset and style. Oh, and style. That feels serendipitous. That feels like a song, a lyric. I had an apartment with like carpet. It was wonderful. And I would just go to the studio every day. And I found myself at the Golden Globes the next year. It was all the things I would see on extra, extra. I was suddenly part of my mom would film me in on everything as if I weren't there. Yeah, mom's like to do that. Yeah. They do it for a while and then luckily, they tire of it and then they stop entirely. Well, the people we even watch TV anymore, it's a thing. Yeah. Yeah. And then we're back to the next. After that year, you're starting to collaborate with like a ton of people I'm sure you could have never imagined even seeing that a cafe in yet. Now you're working with them. Who are you like? Oh my God. I was excited just to get in with everybody. Big or small, I remember Mike Will, producer and came told me he wanted to work with me. I remember Fergie. He was like, told me she wanted to work with me. I remember Sean Mendez wanted to write a song with me. It's all over the place, but I had to realign my thinking. I had to be an artist now and the thing that lacked in the very beginning of my career was consistency. I had a song called Marvin Gaye, which is a fine song with Meghan Train. With Meghan Train. That was also big. And I had no album and all of a sudden I had two big songs. See you again and Marvin Gaye, both working on the other side of the spectrum with no album. So I had to scramble and get every a-list writer to like help me crap this album. And my first album for that reason was kind of inconsistent all over the place. And then in the ninth hour I heard this little loop in my... It's weird to write a song, you have to not write a song, you have the whole song in your head and you just reverse engineer it. So I had... And suddenly we don't talk anymore. We don't talk anymore. It might describe it right? It sounded like the song was out already. It was on the radio but it was playing in my head and you're trying to hear the lyrics. And I had to go to Japan the next day. So I'm making the song on the airplane and the trains. And I'd say like an hour before we had to turn the album and I'd turn that song in. How about that? All these other songs that they got, all these other people to write for me didn't resonate but the one that came from here resonated. Yes. And how were you at collaborating? That's such a specific... It used to be very bad. What things got in your way? Well again, post Ellen Jr. of college, I feel like I know everything. I don't need to collaborate with anybody. Just the frontal lobe not developed. Young man mentality. Literally not. Literally not. And I think I know everything and I remember, you know what, Karadiy Aguardi? Yeah. She was judge on American Idol for a while. prolific songwriter. She actually taught at Berkeley. Now we're going back to 2013 and I remember showing her a song and she was like, this smelly's great, these lyrics are ass. You need to get together with someone who knows how to write lyrics. I wrote this email and like, how dare you up to someone who is so much more successful than you still. Yeah. Yeah. I'm writing the scathing email. Like, no idea. I'm going to show you. Well, and around this time, she famously said his songs are bigger than him in a nutshell. He has these enormous songs, but he himself is not big enough for these songs. I'm paraphrasing, but I did read that line. And that's fair, right? You're just fair. You guys take some minutes to learn how to become a pop star. I feel like people are just starting to know me personally now, but I don't think I let them in. Again, I'm a people pleaser. It's coming up again. I really cared about the music first and maybe stemming from the high school stuff. I never thought that people would actually like care about me. It weren't interested in what I had to say unless it had a catchy little bob to it. But now I find that the tables have turned a little bit. People want to know me. Maybe that's where we are in society. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I'm going to disappoint you now, and I'm going to go to my notes. Wow. I mean, for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck, we missed the whole part about Paris Hilton and winning. Can you sing? That's interesting. Paris Hilton. Oh, Paris Hilton. No, that's kind of an anticlimactic thing. That's what got the attention. Can you believe that 100,000 views and that's what went viral at the time? Wait, it was a video. It was a video that got 100,000 views, and that's what went viral. Oh, right. That counted as viral. That counted as viral back then. Oh, yeah, yeah. Now it's like you're a failure. Exactly. I know. You're 100,000 people is still a lot of people. Yeah. It's so true. Okay, so attention happens. I'm curious now we're to the part where we earmark. Because now you're having to grow into like pop stardom. Because attention's enormous. It's still all looking up stuff on Spotify. And this is a lot of streaming very well. Oh, billions of astronomical amount of streams from that song reached a lot of people. And you put out voice notes and then you go on tour and I already know if we fast forward ahead, you said at one point, I don't like anything I put out in 2019 because I was trying to be kind of a cool guy. Yeah. Yeah. And if I can project, it's like things that were already impossible are happening. So you really start opening up your mind to the notion that maybe anything's possible. It's very easy to go off the rails because already things are happening that were way outside of what you were expecting. So why can't I be just in Timberlake? Yeah. I mean, thus far, yeah, I've got the songs. So you're involved in cool things. I don't even know if I was trying to be another artist. I think it was the crew of people I was hanging around like I am impervious to anything bad. Anything I touch is great. And therefore that extends musically as well. But that kind of faded away in 2019. Maybe my frontal lobe started developing. It wasn't fully there yet. But I'm always exploring and that was the wrong thing to explore. I should have explored something else musically rather than try to talk differently in interviews and make up stories. Yes. And how are you adapting to I know you're getting attention from the proverbial cheerleaders. So pop stars like you and you're now with them. And do you have this panic of like do they know I'm not really supposed to be here? Like how are you security wise in these relationships at that period? I just think that's why those relationships never worked out because deep down the New Jersey boy getting advice from his mom and dad and wanting to make Christmas CDs was still at the nucleus of it all. Yeah. The kid from high school. It's affecting the epidermis, but it wasn't reaching down past the dermis. So I was showing up to every restaurant like crags, which is very good restaurant. It is a good restaurant. I'm going to go loves it. Going back to the relationship stuff. They never came into fruition because I couldn't get past a certain point. I think maybe I wasn't honest with a lot of people. I wasn't honest with myself. I think of Camilla Cabello. She's so talented. She's so wonderful. Yeah. But as I'm talking to her, I'm realizing like, oh yeah, she's also cute. The kid from Miami and this persona is the most confident thing in the world. We all look at that and think like, oh, well, they've been popular their whole life. And they not. Sean's it wasn't. I toward was Sean when he just got started. Yeah. Although he did project into superstardom from a early he made the transition. Yeah. It's not like what you trained for in high school. Perhaps. No. Well, the experience is like 0.1%. It's not normal to get off stage and then just be alone. It's not normal to like be looking left and right and wondering who's going to be running at you. It's not a normal feeling, but the young immature part of me back then was kind of feeding into that because I just totally didn't believe that anyone was going to listen to my music as an artist just based on the music alone. I swear I'm not fishing for compliments in this green room. I just truly didn't believe that people were just going to buy my music because they liked it. There needed to be some sort of catch. I better say this stupid thing in this interview because that's what's going to make people holler and oh, he put out a song. I guess I'll listen to it. That's how my brain used to say. Yeah. Well, how do you know? How long? You know, the height of all this massive success, what was happening emotionally? Very, very depressed. It doesn't matter how much success I had. It's almost like the more success that I had and the sadder I got. Were you feeling fraudulent? Yeah, I was. I stopped feeling fraudulent two years ago. It takes me a lot. I would be at these grannies, these golden globes, and I would be raising my voice and putting the game show voice on and then going back home alone and just being by myself and then being real with myself and just being so physically exhausted from lying. And what did you use to soothe the occasional Xanax, which I had to completely get rid of and the attention of girls? Yeah, I'm sure that's a nice app. That wasn't making me happy. There are. More fraudulence. And these were amazing girls too, who I had an amazing time with and I just was lying to myself because I knew the person for me who was always there and seeing all of my antics play out in the world is my wife now. She stuck by me and was there the entire time because she's a family friend. She grew up one town over from me. My history is like a country song. It's like a small town, small town. Imagine her turning on the TV or going on Snapchat and seeing me participate in all this Tom Foulery and she still saw through it and saw the real me. I keep pointing here like it's like in my gut, but I guess it isn't my gut. But one day I saw her with somebody and I knew they were serious and I was like, oh my God, I'm officially going to lose her because of all my antics, me being reckless. And I found myself because of Brooke, my wife. That's so sweet. Yeah, I was going to ask, so how do you climb your way out of this bizarre, gilded cage you've put yourself in in this fancy apartment? I just happened one day. It's the worst answer ever. I think on my 30th birthday, I started to catch a glimpse of everyone at Delilah right now. I met last month. There's four family members here. What's going on? Yes, the birthday party. Yeah. And a bunch of Irish exits. Chicken fingers are good, but there's no warmth at the birthday party. You know, it's interesting. I went to a birthday party of someone I will not mention, but I did look around and I was like, yeah, man, this is a stunning guest list. I even remember when we were invited, Chris, and I was like, it's kind of weird to be at this person's birthday party. We don't know them that well, but we're going to go. It's like also a professional relationship. And then when I went, it was just like, yeah, everyone was a star. And I thought, not one of these people is a friend. No one has time in this room to be friends friends. But those parties are fun. Jenna, why am I going to lie and say that I've never had fun? But I was impressed for the person's birthday. Absolutely. At 30 years old, it was at the Peppermann Club, not Delilah, but been there too. I was looking at lived in Shrewsdale. You did it all. You did it all. Yeah. And I looked around and I'm like, no one cares about me here. And the person who does care about me won't speak to me right now because she's finally had enough. Then it was a year of, I'm not going near any of that. I can't do it. Everyone's amazing. I've met some amazing people, but this no longer works for me. If I want to graduate to this next important level of my life, and I think my music was suffering too, it didn't sound as good. Well, nothing was coming from really. Yes. You would have had to figure out how to write a song that relayed fraudulence, which is not what I'm sure you thought was going to hit the top 40. It never works. Every song that's ever resonated with millions and millions of people has come from here. And I wasn't fake, but everything around me was fake. And you are a product of your environment. So, of course, I wasn't making great songs. So how did you begin wooing her back to your side? When I said that I was going to show up to her apartment in New York, I actually got on that Jeb Blue, second Jeb Blue, mention today. Love Jeb Blue. Love Jeb Blue. I said I was going to New York. You know how people around here were like, oh, yeah, let's get together next week. I could be down for that. I don't judge people for still saying that, but I took that out of my vocabulary. I made sure that I was punctual. And if I said I was going to do something, I was really going to do it. And I showed up with flowers. And we went on a date. We had never been on a date before. We've known each other for our entire life. We went to this restaurant, Lillia in Brooklyn. That's supposed to be so good. So good. Consistently wonderful. I mean, all the food in Brooklyn is so good. Shout out Mark Luke Colley. I have to say quickly, y'all's generation, like, no one in my group growing up knew about a restaurant. I mean, maybe this is good. I'm also from like a blue-colored thing. I do think generationally, well, there has been articles about the avocado toast generation. Food hit a new level. It's like a scene or it's art. Well, the healthy thing is your generation seems to recognize that joy comes from experiences and not possessions. Yeah. For the older people, they're so reckless with their money, but it's like, great, because you've got a snowblower you bought. That's true. So I do think it's healthy. Yeah. But it's so foreign to me. Right. My age knows 12 great restaurants. But I do think your average is your baseline interest in a great restaurant. I like that. It's just really gone up. That's true. Well, that's very nice. You give a compliment on your generation. Yeah. I think it's great. You'll do a lot of great shit. You drink less. Well, some people do. Well, not you. I'm an exact... You're a black mark on your generation. Okay. You took her to the restaurant. Yeah. Took her to the restaurant. And then I was just consistent. And then a week later, she said she was having a birthday party for her brother. And I'm here living in Beverly Hills. I'm like, I'll take a night flight. She was like, no, you won't. I'm like, yeah, well, and I didn't. Just a proof to myself that I could actually commit. It took like a year. Was it hard to resist wowing her? Like if I was in your situation, I'm trying to win over my hometown girl. I would have been really tempted to like, oh, your birthday, y'all be there. And then I would have planned something like way too spectacular. We're going to hear it. I like her. I would have brought in an elephant or some shit. The last thing she wanted. I think she wanted it. The last thing she wanted. She would have been attempting to go like, well, let me show you what life I can provide us. That's what I did with all the other relationships. Yeah. And that's why they didn't work out because that's not who I am where I thrive is showing that I'm a normal person. And that's how she always knew me. I was presenting this extravagant, larger than life. I'm going to Paris in five hours get on this plane with me. And it's just us on the plane. It sounds made up and it really didn't do anything. Yeah, I know someone was telling a story about their first date with their future husband was flying on the Concord de Paris at first date. And I was like, I mean, I don't know where do you go from there? How do you possibly evaluate? I could fucking hang with anybody on a Concord flight to Paris. I mean, I can't evaluate whether that type in that. That's what they would say about the bachelor and the bachelor at. No wonder those can't work. All their dates are that. Titan's, yeah. Too heightened. That's not normal life. That's kind of why I'd like to work in LA. I'll always love LA. LA changed my life, but that's why my wife and I live in Santa Barbara now because we wake up. We go for walks. But you're not seeing billboards of all your beers doing all the same. Street lights. Yeah, just normalcy. That's nice. It's quite nice. And then if we need to go to X, Y and Z, we just drive the sometimes three hours to get here. Yeah. Sometimes 80 minutes. Sometimes 80 minutes. I don't even know. This isn't bad at all. But in 2021, you co-write and produce Stay with Bieber. How does that come about? Originally, originally, it started out with Kid Leroy, my friend Blake Slacken and Omar Fettie, two very talented songwriters. And the song kind of sat for a year because classic thing, no one believed it was a hit. And then Leroy had Bieber to a verse on it and it lit the whole song up. Tell me about Bieber as someone who knows music. I am just on the outside and I know technically know what's happening, but I know something very magical is happening. Yeah, he's one of my favorite artists. He's incredible. I can't tell if he gets annoyed when I say that my favorite Christmas album is his Christmas album, but journals purpose because it's such an adjacent timeline to me experiencing everything for the first time. The purpose album getting my first car in thousand oaks and listening to it. It means so much to me. I just think his voice is so wonderful. He's got a Michael Jackson quality. Yeah, he has a deep appreciation for R&B and always has his melody writing in his songwriting. He can always hear it. I think it's one of the best voices in pop. So as a producer, clearly you're in that session where he's working on it. I wasn't present when he was recording his vocals. They were sent back to us, but it was a perfect vocal. We're learning this. We just talked Anderson Pack, who's like, wait a number one. I just fucking worship that dude. Yeah, he's amazing. And to find out how much of his music, like his song with Mac Miller, dang, they didn't mean him person till they made the music video and they already had a hit that they had written together. I don't know that. That's such a modern day phenomenon that couldn't have happened in the 70s or 80s. No, it couldn't have. I mean, they were mailing dat tapes to each other, even in the early 2000s. Yeah, I didn't know that. Anderson is so. He came into my studio at Conway one time accidentally and he's so funny. Oh, he walked into the wrong room. He just lights up. What a live rub. He can't describe him and not use the adjective light. Yeah. One of my favorite songs I ever wrote was Stay. I love the little pp pp pp. I love that kick snare combination. Yeah. It's fun. It's got a grit to it too. It has distortion to it. Distortion, a heavily underused thing while producing music. In pop, to make the drums hit, you layer in like a really crunchy kick snare combination. So it sounds like pull down. Pull down. Pull down. It sounds messy, but thin it out and then turn the volume down and place it on top of the super clean drums. You have the imperfect drums and the perfect drums. You have the garnish. Absolutely. It's a garnish of grit. That's why vocals can't be all perfect pitch because I like that. He has the garnish of grit. He just did it or like I wanted some validation from my words, Smithery. I know you were withholding. That's why we've been friends for so long. You know, under withhold. I'm here to be honest. I don't think garnish of grit necessarily the best thing you've ever done. You've come up with. Well, it's mixed messages. Garnishing grit are like diametrically opposed. We'll talk about it. Think about it for a little bit. You'll think about it if you're going to keep that. Exactly. Exactly. We remiss if we didn't talk about then the most recent chapter, which is interesting, which is, and of course you found your way there, but 2021 you start going hard on TikTok. I'm sure, Dill. Was that a reclaiming of yourself? It was. It was to show people that I don't make music just because it's my job. It affects me so viscerally. One small change made into a song like, if you re-record one little vocal, it could change the trajectory of the entire song. I always thought that my job here was to teach that because my mom was a teacher. Maybe that's where I get it from. I was thinking to myself one day, why don't I show everybody what it's like to put some layers in songs? You start with the kick drum. Start there. That's the foundation of your house. When you add the bass, which is like the other, again, I still don't know how to build a house, but like you put the wood on top of the foundation. And the framing. There you go. Thank you. The framing. And then the windows and the nice paint, the nice lacquered paint is like sprinkles on top. That's the reverb that you put at the very end of the record. How do I teach that in a very entertaining way? And that video went viral. Got a lot more than 100,000 views. Was it light switch? Yeah. Kind of a silly song, but I always loved it when my teachers made the lesson entertaining and I thought that was in my opinion an entertaining lesson where people kind of understood where their favorite songs come from. That's so cool. You're the young kid in your room and to find out as simple as the order, what I started with reverb. No, no, let's keep that for that is the glaze. Even the order of things could be so helpful and break through for a kid who's trying to figure out all this shit out in their bedroom. I think that's a very cool thing. I just want people to know that they can come to Los Angeles and be inspired, but if you really wanted to make a record, all you have to do is pull up your phone and open Garage Band. If you have a good idea, you don't have to book studio time. It's almost better if it sounds a little crummy because people will relate to it more because they have the same software on their phone. Interesting. Not to bring up, we don't talk anymore again, but that guitar was recorded on an iPhone. We recorded it in a studio and it sounded not great because it was too perfect, too clean. Everything needs to have a little distortion. Yeah. What's the Japanese word, Monica? Oh, not Wabi. Not Wabi. Not Wabi. The other one. We always think it's Wabi Sabine. It's not. Imperfection. The art and beauty of imperfection. Yeah. Because we are imperfect beings and we can maybe relate to art that is thus imperfect, not to sound like a philosopher. No, it's true. It's why I doesn't work on a lot of levels. It's too clean. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. This is the time for all artists, filmmakers, music makers, anything that involves art. This is the most important time to be as human as possible because pretty soon, if you want an answer to something, I don't know if I'm right, but I feel like you're just going to be able to ask yourself the question. You're just going to know it right away. I know. Yeah, like a neural link setup. Yeah. I'm still going to be antiquated ways of making stuff, but it's going to be appreciated. People will appreciate human made. It's going to be of high value because I think for a while there, it wasn't. Well, it's very interesting at first. My own arc with it's like when I'm first seeing these crazy videos, they're awesome. I'm like, oh my God, there's a raccoon driving a race car. It very quickly became just like white noise. Yeah, absolutely. I'm not very interesting even though it was exciting at first. Yeah, this is our opportunity to be as human as possible. The whole point of art and conversation is the human exchange. Yeah. So when you know it's not, you know it's all manufactured. I don't think us as humans can connect to it in the same way at all. Even if it's word for word the same, we know it's not genuine. It's about fumbling over words and maybe we speak at the same time. Oh, so we'll edit that out. This album that I just finished, that's going to be my fourth album, it's a direct response to all the perfect music that you hear out nowadays. My sister was telling me she has two young kids, a boy and a girl and they go to the cutest school ever and they were having a bubble party. They put a playlist together in AI playlist of bubble music. Oh, I'm like, just play popcorn by new addition, play Britney Spears, put some effort into like making a playlist. I mean, sure, fine, but it's lacking heart. We need to put the heart back into art. That's why I made this album. Can't spell heart, the art. Really good. Now that's the one that that's the worst headline. That's the worst headline. Out of all the, we're almost to whatever's clever in 2024. I'm servicing my friend Monica right now. I know it's coming. Well, I need to go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead. Taylor. Yeah. Because it's just your with the lyric, right? Yeah. The lyric on the torture poet's department was we declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist. That's very nice. So tell me how you take that because my brain is so good at turning everything terrible. I could turn that terrible. What are you saying? I should have been bigger. Right. That is a huge compliment. I think it's a huge compliment. I did actually think that was AI at first, but then I listened to it and I listened to it a couple times. Someone he sent it to me right before it was supposed to come out. And I knew it was real because of her diction and the way that she sang it musically. I felt human enough for it to pass as human. And I thought to myself, what does that mean? Do I need to open up more in my music? I feel like I do need to open it because that's why she's beloved and has 100,000 people coming to every show is because everybody can relate to her very human lyrics. Maybe I need to not worry so much about, oh, I hope this song as I hit versus really put focus on what's be real here and sing about things that I haven't sung about before. I have a song called I Used to Be cringe, which I don't believe anybody's heard yet, but it's kind of like disarming. It's like a nice accoustic guitar, but with a nice vocal melody and a choir and the lyric is I used to be cringe. And it's like, why would you put that in a song? I kind of resisted it for a while, but then I kept hearing the Taylor lyric and thought I might need to. Oh, that's lovely. That was inspiration. Exactly. Absolutely. Personally, I think she meant what I think most people are going to think if they know you very surface and they listen to this, they're going to think that same thing. Like, wait a minute, this is a musical genius. And we've categorized him as this pop star. And that's not correct. And I think that is what she's saying here. How do you not resist calling her and going, well, clearly you like me. So what's party like not doing something together? That would make my first selfish thought. I just wrote her a thank you note, like a handwritten thank you note, because I really did think it was such a nice thing took time to record that vocal. That was very, very nice. Yeah, whatever is clever, we're already touching on it. So I imagine you're now, as opposed to I'm a hit seeker, I am now going to attempt to self examine and find these things that I actually care about and explore those. Yeah. And hits might come out from that. Right. I don't know. We say in a, we're in the show up in work business, not the results business. And I think that's a good model for everyone to live by, which is like, you do the thing you do and you just don't know the results. And that's that. I like that. So how does one start this mining process? I remember my collaborator, blood pup came in and said, we need to make you feel a little uncomfortable to make something beautiful. He said, have you ever written a song about your dad? And I got very defensively. You don't know my dad. Like, why would I ever write a song about my family? What are you getting at? And he was like, your dad might want it one day. I was like, what does that mean? And I was so weird. And then I spent all we thinking about it. And then my dad's mom lives to 94 years old. And she had passed. And I have this song suddenly for my dad. And I was like, wow, now I have something to play him. It's called Cry. It's features Kenny G. It's awesome. Oh, yes. Playing? Yeah. Playing the solo at about the two minute mark in the song. And lyrically, it's about just telling somebody, you don't have to be an emotional brick wall. You don't always have to be the hero. You can show emotion to me, not that he doesn't know that. But it's nice to have a reminder, especially a musical reminder. But I wrote that before that instant even happened. So once blood told me to write that, I was very open-minded. Yeah, I said that blood pop is very, very involved in this. I'm totally ignorant on blood pop. Tell me about blood pop. Works a lot with Gaga. Also as a video game designer, a very smart person. He's obviously very talented and has made countless hits. And really important bodies work for a lot of other artists. I'm always trying to musically explore. So I thought it'd be a good idea. Yeah, I would imagine from just this limited interaction of the last hour and a half, this is something that I have assigned to Phineas, whether it's real or not. It's like I watch that beautiful dog with he and his sister. And what I saw is a big brother who's so loving and can handle all of her little imperfections and keep picking her up and pushing her forward. And it's so beautiful. It blows my mind. And I'm so moved by him. And so when I was asking, what's your collaboration experience at the beginning? It's like I don't see you as having that skill set at that time. And I also could see that you would really benefit from someone that would be like, no, no, no, we're going to definitely get more emotional here. Yeah, sometimes I need to be led into the right direction, which is probably why I'm a better artist than I am an executive producer for another artist. I would always love to have a hand in another brilliant artist's work, but I don't know if I'm ever going to be the one that mines it out of them. Yeah, because I feel like I have such a long way to go and I feel like I'm just starting my career in some way. Well, so I don't know that you get that technical aptitude. You don't get the whole fucking pie, right? So it's like, you know, maybe Phineas can't hear the thing and memorize the thing like you and here. That's a flat and this and that. And then he has this other thing. So it's like, we try all the time to be everything. It's a waste of everyone's time. It's fine to have strengths. And then yeah, to collaborate and bring in people that can help with that, like a thumbprint. No mind is alike. And I work with Phineas one time and he brought all these strength samples. I didn't even think about including strength samples in a song that we could write. There's singers that will suggest a different melody like Ryan Teter out of one republic, really talented producer. I'll sing him a melody and he'll suggest something else that most of the time ends up being better because I was so stuck on like one thing, but he suggested one little change. And it was really good. That is Max Martin. Max Martin, really wonderful producer. Just did the Taylor album. I always want suggestions. I will never know everything. Okay. Last thing is you're singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Sure am. Oh cool. Yeah. Now I got to say we just interview Chris Stapleton. No one has a right to be more confident than Chris Stapleton. And he said for sure the most nerve-wracking experience of his professional career was singing the national anthem. I had no idea. No, that should be comforting. No, no, no, no, no. I'm so confident. I have the whole arrangement in my head. Oh, my God. My local newspaper, the star ledger told me that I am the second New Jersey native to sing the national anthem for the first being No Whitney Houston. Oh, wow. Without giving too much away, I just musically know where I'm going with it. And you're excited. I'm excited. I picture an orchestra on the field. I picture a choir on the field. And just a tiny little keyboard that I'm not going to hide behind, but like a road. It's like a really warm road sound. Like a road from the 1970s. Everything that's non-football related I'm having at the 20 yard line. And I just can't wait. I want to do it in D major. And I have it all in my head and we can play this back after I do it and see if it was all right. But I think it's going to be in D major. There's going to be choirs. There's going to be an orchestra. And it's going to end like. Mm, timpini, tpong, tpong, tpong, tpong, all the string players are going to go, and that's how I imagine it. And the fucking F-16s are all. Can you imagine? Oh, my! I got goosebumps just thinking of it now because it feels like I already did it. It's a similar thing with writing a song. Again, to write a song, you have to reverse engineer. I feel like I already did the performance. And now I'm going to just do it for real and hopefully. I think I'm correct. I think that's what's good. Oh, good. I'm glad. So excited to watch it. Yeah, yeah. These things is arbitrary or as many of them as they seem. No, they're like really special, cool things. I always get lost in the music. I opened up for Billy Joel once. I was like, what's it like on stage? They're playing for a stadium every night. He's like, I don't know what I'm doing. I get lost in the music. I didn't know what he meant at the time. And I now do the same thing. I get lost in the music. His music is so amazing. Yeah. I just love it so much. Now you're going to go on on tour in April with whatever's clever. Yeah. And you got a new baby coming. So is that that stressful? It keeps me up at night. If I'm going to be completely honest, I have to go on tour right after the baby's born. But they will come. The baby going to travel. Oh, yeah. They'll come. Yes, because I'm going to tell you something. That feeling you have in the hotel will not be that. You will come off this energy thing. And then you will look at your little submarine sandwich. It's in the stupid little swaddle. Oh my god. Oh, stupid little swaddle. This is actually way better than no. I always want to find a perfect balance for baby. I never wanted to be the Charlie show constantly because now there's another version of me. And he or she will grow up to be whoever they want to be. And I don't want to be selfish and have it always be about me. Our little kids, Chris and I was doing movies all over. And we just all went as a little fucking caravan. And there's playgrounds everywhere. It's not until, and that is the time where you need to be on yourself. It's like, hey, once they have friends at a school, it's not cool to pull them out and fuck and make them miss everything. So they can be with you. That's the time. But you are five, six years out from that. I've even thought about that. I appreciate the advice. Yeah, let it rip. They love going everywhere. The more you travel with them, the better travels they are. Our kids could sleep on airplanes. They didn't cry. It's good for them. They're going to expose all kinds of things that they wouldn't be able to. There's smells and sounds and different colored people and different accents and different languages. That's important. The different colored people. For sure as early as they can get it. Want to get the big headphones for the baby? Yeah, exactly. Well, Charlie, this was delightful. This was downright therapeutic. Oh, this is like super fun. That's what we like to hear. I do got to add whatever's clever comes out on Lincoln's birthday, ding-ding-ding. March 27th. March 27th. First day for me. Right before flu season ends. How do I know this? I know the OBGYN. Well, thanks for coming. This is a blast. Everyone check out whatever's clever. Watch you on the Super Bowl and go see you on tour. Thank you very much for having me. You're welcome. I sir hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom Mrs. Monica comes in and tells us who's wrong. I was your first walk to where? It was my first walk to where? It was my first walk. I mean, you used to walk to where? First two minute walk. First two minute commute to work. How about that? Thank you. And I even got to bring my tea. Wow, why not? And look at this mug. What was the price tag on? Yeah. I don't know, but it's good for today. It's gloomy out. Uh-huh. So this mug has a rainbow coming out in the suns popping out of the clouds. Uh-huh, peeking out. Underneath? Uh-huh. Careful. I know. Careful. There's a cloud. There's rain. Don't lose your equilibrium. I know. What if just looking up at that you fell over? I might. Okay, so this is great. I have my first question about your new house, which is, is the gloom the same. It's raining for folks who don't know on the Los Angeles. Yes. And I open my French door and I can smell the rain and I meditate and I general, and I'm just looking out at all the wet trees. And it's so beautiful. Yeah. And you can now too. Do you change anything? Well, I can, but my alarm is on. I've, I've set my alarm off a few times by accidentally opening the window. Well, purposely opening the window, but forgetting that I have set the alarm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really loud. So anyone who wants to rob me, it's not going to work out. It's not going to work out. Do you have it on an app though? My alarm. Instead of you having to find a keypad and all that to open your fucking window, you just pull your phone out of your pocket. Okay, well, depth, depth, depth. Another hurdle is we know and you don't like this about me. This is one of the things you hate the most about me. One of the million things I hate about you. Yeah. Ten things I hate about you. Great movie. Great movie. Is I lose track of my phone a lot. Great point. Great point. And that's in my in my small apartment, I would lose track. Now the house has proven to be trickier where I leave my phone. You just got an iPad and you keep by your bedside table that you can turn it off for them. So you'll figure out how to lose that too. Because there's the kind of solution I'm always suggesting Rob is like you have a second phone. The second-phone. The second-phone places you set the thing down. I know, but you're not going to do that. That's why I've accepted that. I know. It's been years. You've had to accept it. I remember one of our first fights about that. You do? Yeah. Oh, how did it go? We were in your old house in the living room. And I couldn't find my phone. Misplaced your phone. Yeah. And you suggested having spot, having designated spot. Your motto designated spot. Every on my tombstone. Use it designated spots. And Kristen was there too. And she was like, well, not everyone. She was really trying to bridge the gap. Defend me. Yeah. Does she too need to use it designated? It was really two against one. Yeah, but she, I think she uses designated spots more than me because she's been living with you for a long time. Yeah. There's no one has adopted designated spots except for me. Yeah. And then we found her phone. It was so wild in like a box. We were returning something. And it was in the box that God we found. That almost got returned. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, that's not a designated spot. That's an interesting designated spot. No, it's an antithetical to the point of a designated spot. If the designated spot's about to travel via the US Postal Service. Yeah. I want you to have a tether actually, like a 40 foot coily. Just the thin thing like that they put little kids on, uh, uh, uh, leashes on at the mall. Yeah. It even thinner. Okay. And that's anchored to your nightstand. And you can travel around your house and use your phone and you're just dragging this everywhere. Oh, that sounds horrible. Yeah. That's another great solution. Just so you know, my house is way too cute for that, for a little string all over the place. Right. But maybe after two weeks of it and hating the eye so early, you'd be like, fuck, I'll do a designated spot. Yeah. Maybe you're right. Well, if you guys got to do a designated spot, if I get a dog, then I'll train that dog to do the phone. No, you get a second phone that goes around the dog's collar. Oh, or maybe get an Apple watch that goes on its collar and the only app on it is find my phone. And you're like, no, my dog is gonna be like really smart. My dog's name is Ross. Ross? Yeah, because Monica and Ross, I already named him. Oh, okay. And I'm just going to have him smell the phone a lot. So he just knows where the phone is at all times. Your reward and retreats every time he gets the phone, but he's going to bite the screen. But he has a soft touch. Okay. My dog does. Anywho. Yes, I've been there for about a week, less than a week. Five days. Yeah, five days. Five days to Wednesday. Yeah. At first, Anna came over. She slept over the first two nights. And how did that go? That was fun. That was so fun. Yeah, that was really fun. You just drink wine? Yeah, of course. Have you been started to get into hairplay yet? No, she's not a hairplay person. So you had the two sleepovers and then she left and then your first night on your own, were you scared? Yeah. Do you feel great? I was a little scared, but not nearly as scared as I thought. Uh-huh. And what's it like to wake up and go downstairs and have like breakfast or make your tea? It's so far. It feels like I've been somebody else's like really nice house. Yeah, yeah. It has not sunk in that all these things are mine. Yeah, yeah. That I can poop on the floor if I want. Sure, there's no log against it. And I told you this, the first night I was by myself, I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and you know, I had to walk far to get there. And I was like, oh wow, I feel pretty like confident and I know my value for the most part in the world ish. I don't have a lot of imposter cinemas when I'm trying to say. In your general life. In your general life. And when I was peeing, I was peeing in the night, I was just like, oh my, how, I do not deserve this. I was very much like the other something bad is going to happen. You're allowed to have this. Yeah, why? I'm not, this isn't for me. Like I don't deserve it. Yeah. So that was weird. I never feel like that. Like I buy shit all the time. Nice stuff. I know. But I think the apartment, weirdly, now I can see in retrospect all these apartments that are very reasonably priced. Modest. You've been living in a modest apartment. Yeah. I, Renee though, in the stupidity of all this is I've been paying a mortgage. I just haven't been seeing it or paying attention to it. That's true. And I've been paying rent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've actually been spending more money than I am right now. Yeah. That's true. It's just weird to be in there and and feel. Yeah, it's just a, it's just a weird mental game. It's hard to. It's hard around here, head around. And then yeah, you're like, well, someone's going to come take it clearly. Oh, I mean, the amount of times I've thought about the LA fires since I moved it, I think about it every 14 minutes. I'm just like, oh my god. It's going to burn down. Yeah. Like this, I spent six years. This could burn down any minute. In six minutes. I think it's worth sharing because it's like, it's all so much trickier than your guessing it's going to be. Yeah. Which is not to say it's not fantastic. Oh my god. It's so fucking lucky, but also so lucky. There's just a lot of mental. They're tied together. The feelings of gratitude and the feelings of. A worthiness. Yeah. Are like are all the same. Like you don't really feel like you're unworthy of bad things. You know, it's like, it's the good things that you're like, oh my god, I don't, I don't deserve this. But also because I was talking to Anthony last night and I was like, what's funny though? Because I was like, oh my god. How much like do I talk about the houses that can sound so braggie? But what is also funny and something I don't think about a lot is not, of course, not everyone. But a lot of the people listening have houses. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a city like LA, New York, San Francisco. It's very specific cities where you can't afford a house at all. Yeah, yeah. Home ownership is limited to a very few here. Yeah, percentage wise population. Yeah, it's a Michigan, most of my friends own house. Yeah, and I think most people listening who aren't in those parts of the country, probably a lot of them have houses and this is like that. It's just new to me. I had it with the first house I got. Yeah. And I sleep in on the floor in front of the fireplace because the heat wasn't on yet. Yeah. And I'm just both going like, well, this is what you get when you're 50. Yeah, that's so interesting. I don't have that age thing. I think maybe because all my friends growing up, they're all of houses. Well, specifically a nice house. The majority of the houses in Milford in 1980, they were lower income, small little houses. So for people who got that like 3000 square foot house on an acre, that was always a dude in his peak earning 55. He invented the company for 35 year, you know? Yeah. So my parents have a, oh, I should say I'm on meth right now. Okay. Unde. Yeah. I'm on D. Nice. It's a good ride. I have a cold. And it's fine. So you don't have a death. Remember when you took a drug test and it showed up a little bit of a meth because you had you're on D. Yes. Yeah. And then right after all the chaos. Yeah. And I'm like, I am not on meth. You guys, I just ate. You'll never see me eat on meth. Although I just, I slept last night. Yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. It's my parents. They have this shocking, this big superstition. Okay. That when you move in, and they've been talking about this for years, like when you move in, there's a ritual that has that I have to do where I pour milk in a pot and you boil it until it boils over. It's got to come out the science. Yeah. I mean, how did these things go? It's like your cup run it over. Okay. And then you have to wait to start like, you're bringing in like abundance and I, and you know, I was like, oh boy, okay. But you have a nice new range. You don't want to get hot milk all over you. I know. I was like, I'm going to like, you know, have this like boiled milk every where. That's a smell. Yeah. But it was, it's so important to them. Like they brought it up so many times. Yeah. And then, you know, on Friday, they're like, don't forget the milk. When do you have to do it, night one, I imagine? So that, I got nervous about that. I was getting in my head because I was like, I don't have a small enough pot right now to do it. Yeah. And so I was like, can I do it tomorrow? And I was like, like I could tell she kind of didn't like that. Yeah. What could she do? Yeah. So I did do it. Good. I mean, my head to her would have been like, if you're going to do it, do it right. Do it right now. No, no, I didn't do it that way. Oh, geez. Oh, my God. And now I'm superstitious. No, no, no. I didn't have the pot. We should borrow your neighbors. I have. No, I know, but it needed to be really small because like then I'm pouring so much. Well, you want to run it over, flood your kitchen with hot milk. That's the goal. I didn't want to put like two gallons of milk in there, waste it. Right. So I ordered from a big conglomerate. Something I'm trying to do less, I did do because 24 hour shipping. I ordered this very small pot. Okay. And it was like a little bit of work around. We'll continue. Why? Well, because if you're a cup runneth over, the whole point is abundance. Yeah. And you're going to heat up a thimble with a drop of milk in there. No, no, no. No, it's the spilling over. It's not going to be a mound of milk. It's just that it boils to the top and spills over. Okay. God, I wish they could explain to me. It makes sense to me actually logically. Like, yeah, you know, you know the idiom, your cup runneth over. I do, but that's when you fill a cup. You have so much bounty that the cup filled and you overfilled it because there's excess. Putting some marginal amount of milk in a pan and the making it boil over is very interesting. And I'd like to know a little more about the logic behind it. Okay. And my head, maybe it's like, you work for it. You work hard and then your cup runneth over. But they might tell me this, which would be satisfying. Yeah. Generally when people boiled milk and rice, there wasn't ever enough that it would have come out the pot. But occasionally you had so much that you were making such a big batch. That would happen. And I'd be like, oh, great. So there has to be something behind it. Might be fun if I call my back. Okay. Call her. Yeah, because she's not going to know. That's what'll be fun about it. Yeah. I'm going to get my dad's there too. No, he's at work because he's retired. Hi, Mom. You're on the fact check. Okay. Hi, Nermie. Okay. Mom, we have a question about the milk superstition. Is there a backstory to it? I need a little bit more of the origin. What it symbolizes, what happened historically? I don't really know. Yeah. That's what we thought we had to see. I've always done it. I mean, I think it has to do with some sort of hindu-turd tradition. I'm kind of spiritual meaning. I don't really know exactly. Okay. I don't understand. That's what we thought. We'll look it up. But I didn't know if you happened to know. We figured you probably didn't know. Monica was kind of free form guessing. And I wasn't sure that it was the right thing. So I mean, I figured it's like your. Something it has to be milk. I mean, and I don't know the thing about spilling over. I don't understand. I think that's like your cup runneth over. I think you're conflating different. Maybe that's what it is. Same. My mom said that's right. Well, of course, I mean, that's the story. You guys are sitting. It makes sense. Yeah. It makes sense to me too. It makes logical sense. All right. Well, we're going to look it up then. Okay. Okay. Bye. Love you. I love you. The overflowing milk represents an abundance of food, love, and warmth in the new home. It's often believed to purify the space and usher in positive energy. I love it. It's milk because that's often offered to deities or shared with family members. And it should ideally overflow towards the north or east directions. They didn't do it. Oh, you're going to put your whole oven on a swamp. You're going to put a shim under there. I didn't know that. I don't know which way. I'm not going to think about which way it went. Okay. So you did do it. You got your little pot. I did do it. I got my pot. I boiled the milk. I sent a video to them. Okay. So then it was like at that. The first day I was by myself. So that feels like that's count. The other days were fakes because they were sleepovers. I'm just grateful it didn't get away from you. And like your sent them a video of you with like bad milk burns. I know. Oh, yeah. She told me I could put aluminum foil under the. Yeah. So I did that. Okay. Great. That's what the Hindus did. They put aluminum foil under there. Yeah. They did because they also respect cleanliness. Anyway. So that was a bit. That was a big superstition. Checked off the list. Thank God. Literally. Thank God. Thanks to the gods. Thanks to the gods, the many gods. And that is true in the times that also my dad went to the temple that day. I think he like felt like he had to go to protect my house. And because also because I wasn't doing the milk in time. That might be where he puts more coins in the sim, by the way. Yeah. He checks in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The text pool. Yeah. But you do give off. Like you give fruit. You give like offerings to the gods. Yeah. As you should. Yeah. You got to appease them. Well, you got to say thank you. Yeah. Well, I did so much. It did feel like you were gone a really long time. For me, I've never had this. I've had a week that felt like two weeks. Sure. This week felt like three weeks. I thought you were going to say like three months or something. No, that'd be nuts. This literally, if you had to ask me like as I got to the airport, when did you fly here? What it really felt like was three weeks. Now I've had it where it felt like two weeks. Okay. But this really, I'm like, I know I've been gone for three weeks. Right. And I know why, which was I left at the crack gas of dawn on a Wednesday. I flew to Miami and I had been told by production. If I wanted to check a bag, I could not take the connecting flight to Key West. That bag would not get there. So I heated them. I'm like, well, I got to bring it back. It's a week. And so I rented a car. So I flew to Miami. Then I rented a car. Then I drove at rush hour to Key West. Okay. Because that's where you were shooting. That's where I was going to shoot. Yeah. Well, plug on the play. Interesting turn of events. So I'm driving there. That says it's going to be four hours. I'm three and a half hours into the trip. And then I get a text that says, your pickup is at five a.m. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, five a.m. Because I'm on L.A. That's two a.m. For me. Yeah. So I'm going to plug on this. This is my pledge for this journey acting again. I was like, I am not going to question anything. Yeah. Which I respect. I'm just not. And then, but then they say luckily the pickup so early, because we're shooting on Marathon, which is a different key, which I just drove through 20 minutes before. So I flipped a bitch. I headed up to Marathon, got my own hotel. And I fucking got to wake up. I got to go in at seven instead of five. Oh, that worked out. And then I shot from seven a.m. till noon. And then I drove back to Miami. Oh. Right when I got off work. Okay. So again, this is to go to a getty to go hang with Aaron. Right. And why was Aaron there? He just to meet you for fun. So I had three days off. I shot on a Thursday. And then I was shooting again on Monday. Got it. It's an entire day to get back to LA. So if I wanted to go back to LA, I would have gone on an entire day to get there. And then I would have been there for one day and then I would have gone on a tired day. It's wouldn't made sense. Right. I did feel like I think my family members like, well, you're going to have three days off and not come home. But I was like, well, two of those would be traveling. So I leave it noon. Here's some guilt. Yeah, I was just like, Kristen might probably would have flown home in that little gap. Well, she, yes, notoriously, she'll do anything to be home. Yeah, Aaron gets there. First night we go out and we get this outrageous dinner. Oh. Beautiful dinner. This restaurant had a pig we could have ordered. We would add order in an hour and a half ahead of time. So whole pig for the table. And it's like, serves six to eight people. Oh my God. And we were like, should we come back and try to take that big? Is that a head on it? I hope not, but probably they like to leave that on. I don't know. I don't need that part. No. They like to put an apple on it to dress it up. Why do they do that? They need to dress it up. No. Or maybe their teeth look so gross. Some in there. I don't know what's going on. Or is it seasoning? Well, you're not eating the face. But maybe it's like, Well, I see people do eat sinks into the body. OK. Anyway, let's hang a bug down the next. We didn't even get it. Now, we know the only reason we can really justify, like, we got to shoot some Ted Seagrist content. Oh, right. We can't be together. Smart. So I book an airboat tour through the Everglades. OK. I get this idea when I'm flying in because you're flying in over the Everglades. And I just start hearing the, um, Jerry Reed song. Here comes Amos. Oh, Amos. Yeah. We just talked about that recently. We need to go from the swamp. Oh, I'm a dedicated for living. I'll just knock them in the head with the stone, son, Louisiana. I'm going to get you Amos. So I hear that song. This is the gross re-song. Yeah, horse, horse. Yeah. Yeah. Which is all about a guy who wants to allocate. So I want to do a Ted Seagrist. Amos. Oh. Here come Amos commercial. OK. So on the drive out to this airboat tour, or like, OK, in order of what we hope can happen, hopefully we see some all you can get the beer can next close to it. Oh, OK. And then we go, one of those anyway, this guy will let us drive the airboat. Oh, God. While drinking some Seagrists. Of course he let you. Well, hold on. OK. We're like, that's the pie in the sky fantasy, right? I'm free. OK. So we meet the dude at the gas station. We follow him to this little fucking palette that's sitting on the shoreline. And there's the big fan boat. You know, it's got the huge, huge propeller in back. And then this big 454, big block motor in it. And the dude's awesome right away. He says pretty quickly you're on recovery, right? Oh. And he's from there. He's, uh, he was Nick a rog one. Oh, cool. But grew up in Miami. And he said you're on recovery. And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, we're both are. In fact, we were on a shoot a bunch of stuff for this NA beer. And he's like, oh, yeah, man, I'm in recovery too. Oh, I'm so happy. Oh, fuck yeah. So this dude had been sober for, I think, two or three years. Oh, good for him. We're whipping through the fucking Everglades. The amount of birds overhead. It's so otherworldly. I'm a man shooting all this great stuff. We get up, we're one inch from a crocodile. We're already, as you can imagine, we're tickled pink. We're drinking beer next to the alligator. And then I say the guy go, listen, tell me to fuck off. But is there any chance if we get in a straightaway that we could like sit in the chair and act like we're driving? And he's like, yeah, let's go. Okay, now go ahead and come look at the other videos. Because we have to learn to try. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. Oh, that's how you drive it. Yes. And then there's a stick in your left hand that controls the fins behind the fan. Wow. So you're just directing the air left or right. And then there's a gas pedal. It was pretty easy to drive. Once you got your hang of the stick because you're not turning left or right, you're going back or forward to go left or right. Interesting. Okay, I'm going to air. All right. This is all right. You guys are such boys. It is so funny. This, like, I don't, I don't, I mean this is a compliment. This looks so boring. Like, like, like, it looks so boring. I'm not the video, but just like to be excited about driving. Like, I just, I can't relate at all. But when you look at that thing, aren't you like, how unearthed do you drive that thing? No. Oh, my God. I think that's the difference. I'm really not at all interested. Oh, yeah. I think for me, I know for Aaron, I'm not going to speak for Robbie. Never agrees with me. You look at that thing. You're like, how are they driving that? Where's the steering wheel? Right. So then there's a little bit of like, could I drive it if I had to? Sure. Oh, see, that's the difference. I guess, and then I get that. You get it, right? Yeah, I get that. Like, what if we were flying an airplane? Like, the guy was like, yeah, I could give it a shot and then Aaron, I flew an airplane and landed when you would just be like, oh my God, I can't believe you did that. So it's a lot of, oh my God, I can't believe we did that. I got to fly. No, but I guess what I'm saying is I don't ever go into an airplane and think like, I wonder how I fly this. Like, that doesn't go in, I'm just like, how do I escape if something bad is going just happening? That's the thing that happens. Yes, and I have an immediate challenge in front of me. We were saying, like, would we try to drive a cruise ship? Oh. Oh. Is there a video like of the boat not from inside? No, because we would be standing in the middle of a cruise. I know, but I didn't know if you got any. Oh, right. I have video of another fan boat that went by. Okay. Because you're curious what it looks like. Yeah, it's like, because you're just seeing you guys in a chair. Yeah, with an enormous propeller behind us. I know. How you can't see the extent. And you don't even know what an airboat, so I expand a boat is, right? No. Yeah, it's like all the swamp boats. They're crazy. They don't have a propeller or anything. You're just right there. Okay. Yeah. Look at that contraption. Yeah, that is wild. And you're driving it by steering the wind coming off that huge fan. That's cool. Yeah. Fish. Fish. You can drive it over land. That's what's cool about it. And over grass land, you can get yourself in and out of everywhere with those things. Okay. Anywho, we were ecstatic. That's fun. I'm glad you guys did that. Speaking of driving, I forgot to say this earlier when you were talking about the driving portion. Yeah. I got pulled over for speeding. No. And it was by chips. California highway patrol. Yeah. Your bread and butter. Yeah. Do you tell them you were in chips? But I would have if things had gotten progressively bad, then I would have said it. Okay. I'm very close. The house is very close to my apartment. Obviously, I lived five minutes away. But because of the way the highways are, now I'm using a different highway. Yeah, you used to take the five a lot. Always. Yeah, I'm never on the five. I know. And so I was using a different highway to get to a place that I go a lot. And all of a sudden, my GPS told me to take the exit, but right before that was like a side, was like a bus or something. Lane. I don't know what it was. But I took that. Okay. And then there was a chips and they pulled me over. Okay. And I was like, was I not supposed to do that? It was like the first. Was I not supposed to do that? Yeah. And she said, no, that's a something lane. There's a little sign. And I was like, well, I don't have good eyes. I didn't say that. Yeah, smart. Yeah. Okay. I can't see. That's there. Well, that makes sense. I just don't know how to see. So yeah, but I got away with it. Thank God. Got a warning. Yeah, but I was really scared. And she said, she was like, do you live around here? And I was just trying to answer so on. I was like, no, I do. And she was like, she looked at me weird. Like, well, why wouldn't you know this? And I didn't want to explain. Well, I just moved and I normally use the other highway. Right. I'm only good at one highway. So I just was like, I'm really sorry. And she let me off with a warning. Good, good, good, good. So that was scary. I hate getting, I don't like getting pulled. You get pulled over a lot. So you, I haven't been pulled over in a while. Let's knock on one of them. That's about the first time I've ever wanted to knock on a way. Oh, okay. So that was that. Okay. We went out the restaurant Monica, half of its underwater. Oh, wow. It's all this water. And there are performers, contortionists, people hanging from the ceiling by their hair, doing acrobatics. Oh, I love acrobatics. Everyone's dressed. It's kind of like what Marcelo was talking about. It's just like the vibe, the way the men are dressed. Yeah. So upscale. So cool. And it's, but there's upscale that's like fucking, there's no rhythm. No, no, no, no. This is vibrant. I can't tell you how happy we were. Oh, so grateful. Yeah. And then the next day I drove four hours back to Key West, shot all day Monday, had a great shoot day. Like really so happy I ended up doing this whole thing. This was my last day on the show. Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't realize that. Anyways, by the time I landed last night at 10 o'clock at night, I was like, I've been home for three weeks. I had four different life experiences. You did a lot. Oh, spilled. Good fortune. Yeah. Your cup run is over and it happened naturally. Oh, wow. We're going to leave it there for some good luck. Yeah. That's North too. What? That's North too. Oh, really good. That's really good. And he's, it's North East. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, really meant to feed. You did that on purpose. I didn't. I didn't. And it is milk, right? What is that? There is milk in it. It's tea with milk in it. This is so stupid. Wow. My dad. My dad did that. That's a nice framing. It's like when you spill, it's like, oh, it's good luck. It's very good framing. Charlie. Yeah, we should get into Charlie because Charlie has a lot of facts. Weirdly. Okay. Charlie. Facts. Now first off, first and foremost, he performed at the Super Bowl. Uh-huh. As he told us he was going to do. Yeah. He was incredible. Yes. And it seemed like he did exactly what he was aiming to do. He said, like, you know, we can look back and see. And I think he did it. He's like, then the thing will come in here and then the whole world. Yeah. He said a choir. I think that was there. A couple people musicians were like, that's the best. I think that's the best you can do. Oh, oh, God. Yeah. Okay. It was really good. You know, I've, I've sang at sporting events. Oh, you have. I've sang the National Anthem twice as sporting events. By yourself. No. In my chorus. Okay. I was going to say it. Still counts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still counts. But I couldn't see you standing up by yourself and singing the national anthem. That's right. Because you won't sing in here. Now I won't. I'm really out of keeping with what I know. That's right. I was in a chorus. And I think sometimes I would just mouth it. Sure. That's always it's a good technique. Now what song were you referencing that Marv that was ripped off Marvin Gaye song? Right. By Robin thick and for real. Right. Got to give it up. Oh, I'm sorry. Marvin Gaye song has got to give it up. Blur lines is the song. Yeah. And the Gaye state was awarded $7.3 million after successfully arguing that the songs Groove and Phil were lifted despite arguments that the sheet music was different. Now this is a tricky. I think this is tricky because can't they just say they were sampling it? Yeah, that's what's interesting. I think if you there's a lot of rules, there's something about like you can do two or three bars, but not four. Right. I think in sampling, that's what they're working around. I think you have to pay for sampling too. You pay for sampling? Yeah. Well, I won't out this person, but there was an album out recently that had so many what I thought was samples, but I don't think they were samples, but they were they were the same music as other music. So I think this is yeah, this is tricks. Yeah, and also when you start learning to play guitar, when you learn these three chords on guitar, you can play 80% of the rock music that's ever, it's like the, the tempo is a little different, the pace a little different, but it's really just going back and forth between these three chords. So, you know, it's hard. Yeah, it's hard. I'm sure it has to be very obvious. The bloodlines is that song. Right. If you listen to them back to back, there's really no, yeah, and I worship for all. Me too. So no, and we had no shade to him. Probably the thick on the pod. Yes. In that same vein, when Charlie was here and was like doing his amazing thing he can do with his voice and with all the songs, and he can just sing them all, but he can sing the sound. Yeah, yeah. It's so wild. He was doing that and we were like, oh, su su su studio sounds like print. Sounds like 1989. We were talking about that. It was first. We didn't, we weren't sure, but it was 1984. And then Phil Collins was 1985. 1986. So very quickly. And then purple rain is eight minutes and 41 seconds. There's a shorter seven inch, seven inch. You know what that means? That's a 45. So your 33s are 12 inches wide and your 45s are seven inches. So seven inch or 12 inch. Oh, okay. A shorter seven inch edit, often used for radio is four minutes and five seconds. I think that's what we all grew up listening to. Okay. And then live the song frequently exceeded 12 minutes, with some performance is lasting over 19 minutes. That's a long time for a song. That's cool to see and present. Maybe too long for me. Really? You know, I start getting like, when will this end feel? Oh my god. Limited edition though. I guess that's a good framing of it. I'm all about framing today. He asked is is booey sushi still a thing in Maldo? I looked it up. It is. It was open yesterday. Oh, okay. It's spelled B-U-I. Okay. Oh, the name of the host of the New Jersey radio show 101.1 WCBS FM in the 90s. The morning hosts were Ron Lundy and Harry Harrison. Harry Harrison. Anything else is real name? Probably not. I don't know. It sounds a little bit like Dallas. It sounds. It does. Yeah. Also, Harry and the Henderson's. Maybe it was a nod. Yeah. Maybe it's a Sasquatch. What's that mean? Why? Harry was a Sasquatch and Harry and the Henderson's. Oh, I never saw it. They hit it. They hit a Sasquatch. They bring them home. They hit him with a car. I believe that's how they can't. Yeah. I think that's how he came to live in the house. They hit him with a car and then they kidnapped him. Then they wanted to resuscitate him and bring him back to the house and help him. And they became friends. Oh, you know, it's a very uplifting. It's not a horror movie. It's a positive kids movie where they befriend a big foot. I thought it was maybe a show. It might be a show. Oh, okay. It's a film. It's a film. It's a film. It's a film. It's a film. It's a movie. It's a movie. Okay, so you just blew your nose. I cut it, but you blew your nose. Yeah. And since I've had a little cold today, earlier before my de-kicked in, I was sneezing and blowing my nose so much. And I thought he was so much because I was like, this is one so annoying. Is it at the worst? Two embarrassing. Yeah. And Daxis is all the time. And Aaron doesn't even worse. Oh, my. Aaron's been doing it since I met him. He's never had relief from this. I have periods of relief, but in general, yeah, I hate it. I never have to blow my nose unless I've like showered or something so waters in there. Yeah. Or I'm sneezing. Like you have to blow your nose all the time. Y'all the time. Okay. Now, rumsen, the town he's from, he said at 7,000 people. He was right. About 7,200 to 7,300 residents. You really nailed it. He really did nail it. Is Vin Diesel from New Jersey? Uh, no. He's not. Where's he from? He's from Alameda County, California, but then later moved to New York with this fraternal twin brother, Paul. Oh. Yeah. Oh, my God. His mom was an astrologer. We should have him on. His life sounds interesting. The Japanese were that's not Wabi Sabi. Jesus, we brought it up again in an episode I'm editing currently. And it's in a TV show I just watched. Wabi Sabi or this other one? The broken pots. Yeah. Okay. Kinsukori or Kinsugi. Kinsugi is the thing I think of a lot. Kinsugi. What? Translates to golden joinery. That's the thing I left out here and I watched this mashing machine. Where else are watching movies every night? And that's a big part of the smashing machine. Oh, it is? Yeah. Okay. Well, ding, ding, ding. He brought up Smosh. That's similar to the word smash. Uh-oh. Smosh is, because we even was talking about his YouTube stuff, Smosh was big in that world. American YouTube sketch comedy Improv Collective. And I worked for Smosh. Me dead. Yeah. When I had all those millions of jobs, one of them was for Smosh. Someone I did improv with worked for Smosh and I needed a job. So he got, so I wrote little articles for Smosh for a long time. What you did? Yeah, like 10 funniest moments from SpongeBob, 10, like those types of things. Oh, okay. So I did that for a while and I forgot all about it. Oh. For a player. Okay. Is Bruce Springsteen from Ann's Berry Park? So born and long branch and raised in freehold. Oh, as Berry. As Berry Park. Okay. Yeah. As Berry's. No, as. As Berry. Yeah. There's not two S's. Okay. But there's also no Z. So it's hard. Yeah. So yeah. He is? I mean, okay. It's so, it says that he was born and long branch and raised in freehold. So that's not saying anything about it. But then it also says that he was born and raised in the As Berry. Springsteen is as Berry Park, New Jersey. So it must be in freehold or something. Sure. That makes sense. Okay. So I only have one more fact, which is I wanted to go through some classic vocab words because we talked about some vocab words. Okay. I have a list, a thousand most common SAT words. A thousand. Yeah. Let's see how fast I can do it. I'm just kidding. I won't do that. But do you want to pick a letter and I'll pick a couple? Sure. J. Okay. Rare letter to start a word with. J is really small and only has three. Wow. I had a hunch. Wow. Okay. Do you want to guess? Juck's to position. Yes, that's one. Oh, I got a few get these. Juris prudence. No, but in that vein, in that category. Well, judicial. Yes, but it's a version of that one. Judicate. No, that's not anyway. All right. Judicious. Judicious. Yeah. Wow. Okay. We're kind of, I'm going to say we're 1.5 for two. I know. I'm going to give 1.8. Okay. And then the last one. I'll never get. No, you'll get. Should I give you a hint? Yeah, give me a, some kind of a hint. It's, it's a state of being, a positive state of being. Oh. Jubilant? Yes. Oh. Wow. That was so fun. It's Jubilant? Yeah, Jubilant. How I feel? Yeah, I don't say it right. Wow. That was really good. Oh, fun. I'm impressed. Oh, I'm impressed. I'm impressed. Oh, fun. I'm impressed. Oh, thank you. I love it. I impress you. Wow. Just to position. Judicious. And Jubilant. That's right. Really good. Really good. Okay. Well, that's it for Charlie. I thought that was a lovely episode. I put him in the category of people like I put Charlie Sheenan where I had a really strong idea of what they were going to be and that they were very much not that. Yeah, I wasn't saddled with any expectation of him. I'm kind of in the dark a lot about, you know, like I don't know about the Taylor Swift song about him and stuff. Right. I'm kind of a dumb dumb. He's a genius. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a musical genius. Really wild. I didn't know that. Yeah. All right. I love you.