Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Charlie Puth

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Charlie Puth (Whatever’s Clever, Voicenotes, Nine Track Mind) is a Grammy and Golden Globe Award-winning songwriter, recording artist, and producer. Charlie joins the Armchair Expert to discuss his opinion that standup is the scariest job, how everyone in New Jersey is their own local celebrity, and that what’s most important about recording is capturing the air in the room. Charlie and Dax talk about the photographic memory-like way he approaches sound, learning he wanted to write his own music after discovering 70s pop and R&B, and making a Christmas album that he sold door-to-door at age 11. Charlie explains why his history with his wife is like a country song, the realization that he had to remove fraudulence from his life, and embracing the beauty of imperfection in being human.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert. I'm Dax Shepard 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.

His 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 fascinating. Yes. Yeah. Please enjoy Charlie Puth. He's an object square. Hi there. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Hey, this is the greatest fucking setup I've ever seen. Oh, that is kind. What part of town do you live in?

I live in Santa Barbara. Oh, my goodness. I lived there for one year as a college student. Are you a Montecito? Mm-hmm. I say Santa Barbara because it sounds a little cooler. No. You're afraid it sounds bougie to live in?

It is bougie. Although yesterday was a very unmonicito day for me. What happens? Tell me. I saw this dog running down San Jacido. It's a little fluffy, hyperalogenic little pup. Maybe like a doodle mix. Like a little doodle mix running like cars.

There's no police in the fucking town. Sure. The dog's running. He's going to get hip up. by a car. I throw the hazards on. My pregnant wife, we were going to pick up her car and I'm like, we're not doing it right now. I run out in the street and pick this dog up, put him in the back seat, and then two hours of really intense looking for the owner. Did it have a little tag on him? It did, but this is the most California shit ever. It led to a business manager.

Basically. I swear. It's a dog's business manager. A humane society. The guy picked up yawning. Hello? I'm like, I found this dog. dog that there's no owner attached to the tag. Do you know whose dog? This is. And may I ask who's calling? I'm like, okay, some... Yeah, some urgency would be nice. Some urgency 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 led 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 fuck did it scare scared the shit out of me. Yeah. Well, who was 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, why would you look super close up to my face we just met? Can. You invite me? Feel free to exit your chair and really get in there. In 1992, 400 stitches at this area was really tough at the time. 400? You got your eyes.

You take your whole... No, it didn't. It 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. Good for you. You have Stockholm syndrome where you fall in love with your oppressor.

Yeah. Woof presser. I am imagining your face probably for a minute. Your parents must have thought, oh my God, he's never going to look the same. Were you pretty deformed up top for a minute? For a while I was, I was pretty bandaged up for a while. Up until a couple weeks ago. Just in time for the pod.

Just in time for the pod. We needed a story. Until like four years old. 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 to somebody about this, my voice. I'm really self-conscious about singing. Oh, you're singing for it. And 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 than 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 going to sound dear. I'm now used to it, but people who aren't used to it are just hearing the remaining 30% of just audible. Yeah, so I've always heard this. And I guess I don't have a memory of hearing my voice and 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 Goebbem asked me to come sing at his show at the Trubador the other night because I just happened to be in town. He plays clarinet. What's he play?

He plays piano. He's, okay, I'm sorry. That's what are you, Alan who plays the clarinet, lest us 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. 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 Goldblum 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 Goldblum'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. Yes. But I don't think the fear goes away, even if the circumstance is 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 going to love whatever they see.

They're into it, like being into punk rock. So they love it. They're junkies. Whereas you perform in Vegas, and it's like, I'm not even 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, it could get you through it. Right. But if you're shitting the bed in comedy, there's nothing else going on. Especially if, like, remember Brian Regan?

Yeah, yeah, remember? 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. Yes, 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 two men. Okay, great.

They're good at it. They're pretty good at it. 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,

we'll record one vocal. and then put the microphone back a little bit. Wow. Say it again. Like same piece of music to 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. The tone is just important as whoever's singing, whoever is playing an instrument, because the tone kind of sets the stage for the record. You know a record called What's Going on by Marvin Gaye? Marvin Gay always had a lot of question marks in his music. Sure, sure, sure. But Marvin Gay, what's going on?

In the very beginning of their record, it sounds like a party. If you can kind of play it in your head, people are talking, hey, what's happening? Blah, blah, blah, blah. It's the one that famously was ripped off, right? That's the track? Not that song. I'm talking about the original. Okay.

Mother, mother. Oh, yeah. You can just hear. In the very beginning, hear a bed of noise. It's just a bunch of people having a party. And that plays throughout the song when the music comes. And that's the bed of noise. It's very, 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 Led Zeppelin? I want to say Led Zeppelin 2, 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 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. Well, even pedals, right? I mean, there's 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 it's the goal. I don't know if the show would sound better with a ton of reverb. I got scared.

I was like, you put it to the test. What if we heard all this echo? Can you imagine if your show did have a ton of reverb? Yeah, it'd be kind of 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. W-CBSFM. 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 you're semi-close to Manhattan as you commuted at one point in high school. Like an hour away. And what kind of town is it? Rumson. It's like a business town. It kind of would remind somebody of Connecticut, something like 7,000 people. You can take a boat into South Street, Wall Street. Not a very musical town, but a very nice town.

Fancy? Fancy. A little Connecticut. Fancy. Yeah. But interesting because it's on a peninsula, so I grew up on the beach. Oh, yeah. Another headline. But I like it there. I haven't been back in a long time, but close to Asbury Park, which is where Bruce, I believe 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 fairy. It's like a big catamaran ferry where they served vodka at 5 o'clock in the morning. Oh, that's good for those Wall Street. That's when you know the market. is down. It's a real bear market. Everyone's pounding vodka. A very unmusical town, but everyone in New Jersey is their own local 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 the best guitar teacher in town. You know, the thing in Detroit was,

was everyone you met had an uncle who had played in Bob Seeger's band. Oh, in the Silver Bowl band. And everyone you met's uncle was in the Silver Bowl fan, which obviously numerically couldn't be possible. Right. But your town had a thing. Yeah, Bob Seeger was the king or Ted Nugent, but no one ever claimed to 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, so-and-so knows Bruce, which means I know Bruce. Yeah, sure. Bruce Springsteen's 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, four, wow. Yeah. There's more coming. He does his research. She 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. Why didn't Mom want to 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. And 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.

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. Like you study for a vocabulary test.

You're going to memorize a definition of whatever. Plethora. Plethora. Most hated word. Classic vocabular. or it means many. Cornucopia. I'm going to memorize the definition of that.

Horn of Flenty. That's the definition. Absolutely. You passed the vocabulary test. But I always equated sound as something physical that you could hold or see. Do you have that synesthesia? It's kind of. 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 bye, bye, bye, by. sync and be like, okay, that's an A-flat minor. And I'm doing this tonight. And then it goes to the da-da-da-da-dun-dun-dun. And then the pre-course goes to E major.

F-shar major, non-da-na, on and on. If I had a piano, I'd play it. And is that pleasurable for you? Or is it a maddening? Yes. Yeah, it's pleasurable, right? Pleasurable. I bet you're cracking the code a bit.

I think music can move any room. This is why I write music. I've always wanted to be responsive. 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 going to slow things down a little bit now. We're going to give everyone a little break so that we can go fucking hard for that encore, right? You need a recharge. Hit the snare, boom. And you're right back into it, Phil Collins, Genesis.

So Studio. Exactly. Can you imagine like four slow songs and then you hear a super. studio just out of nowhere, it just makes you want to get up out of your chair. How did you make people get up out of their chair? You hit the first kind of sounds like 1999. It does. It does sound like that. I wonder who was first.

I think Prince was first. He's first. Yeah, he's always first. I just saw this. This is crazy. So I guess Prince had had some success, but middling success. And of all things, he went to a Bob Seeger. show. Have you seen this? No, I haven't, but I remember one controversy, that album, people didn't

get it right away. He could play clubs and he 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 improved 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 ballots. 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 he 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 museo 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 going to be interested in you let me worry about that okay you 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 might be one buried in the track at the very end, but right now it's just... Mm-hmm. It don't have to be you for to turn me on. It's just drums. and the little background vocals like overdubbed.

But there was an acoustic guitar layered in there and Prince was like, uh-uh, there's too much going on. He side chain compressed keyed the acoustic guitar to a high hat and then the rhythm that the high hat was playing, you know the sound of a drum high. 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. That's what I made. 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 you onto 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 have such a sophomoric understanding of how a house. To this day, I still really don't understand it. Did 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. 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. It's like this kid's fucking easy. If you know, if you know your kid is going to do something. Is artsy? Yeah, you're not going to be like, build this house, please. Well, I think my parents knew I was artsy and musical when I went to Catholic school, which meant I went to Catholic church. That was kind of a deal. And I would hear the same music, holy, holy, holy Lord, I would hear the same music over and over. 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've memorized it because I heard it so many times. And everyone looked at me like an alien. This was 11. Okay, great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 11 or 12.

What could make a service better than a cute little 11-year-old popping up and filling in on the organ? But also everyone's like, what do you mean you memorize? it. Get out of here. Freak, he's been touched by the devil. 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 are like, okay, we're going to go get your brain tested. 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 ten? Ten years old.

You're good. Thank you. Ten. And then you go to jazz camp, right? You go to Count Basie. I went to Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, home of Count Basie. That's why I was saying 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 a Luther Vandross record. It was on 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, it was 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. 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 found out that I was not the first to have that idea. That was all of Quincy Jones's 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? Oh, I can tell 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. I'm like, mm. It's involuntary. At 34, I'm getting a lot better at. 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 than... 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, probably. I think most musical geniuses have been rough hangs, with the exception of a few. Or just misunderstood. I'm not going to say Rob Hanks. 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, See You 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 pot, I think I fell into having a bad business manager. Oh, you know we're going to get there. We're going to get there. I want to earmark 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 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 boozing 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 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 get turned around. She really startled me. And I just was really silent. She was like, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to start all you.

And I just started crying. I don't know why. Yeah, you're sensitive, dude. But like, I get down on myself because I'm about to have a kid and I don't 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 a beautiful thing. Let the kid see.

It's okay to be exactly how you like. You almost took a tree out. into that kind of sensitive too. Into your eucalyptus tree over here. Prince is 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 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's trying to figure out a way to get some homeostasis. But it's like, I'll drink a little bit to get back up to even. Even a few weeks ago, post-gold. than globes. We 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 LA, where it's always something to get a hit from. Yeah. Oh, boy, that's dark. Okay, so back to school. Now, I'm imagining, 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 Clemda 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 a string time.

Those core changes, like all nice and how David Foster. plays the piano, how Bill Evans plays the piano, and 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. So he was very supportive. I met a couple teachers who weren't so supportive. But I'm imagining your peers there. They like your talent because there are 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 plopping back and forth into a place you're appreciated and then a place where you're suffering. I'm plopping 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 and needing to please people constantly and having a fear 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. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate 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 Allstate

first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary, subject to terms, conditions, and availability, Allstate North American Insurance Co and affiliates, Northbrook, 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 paying 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, we're at 97, print out all the little CD labels and go door to door. But I just always wanted to make an album. I was always obsessed with making an album, seeing the celebrity in sync 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, yeah, 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, who 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 and your own. You're doing a lot of acoustic covers. Yeah, yeah, 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 bands. 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. And then

you get into Berkeley School of Music. And if everyone else is as dumb as me, that is not Berkeley out here. That's Berkeley in Boston. No, you'd be surprised a lot of people get confused. I thought, oh, he went to Berkeley. And I was like, why is it spelled with two easy 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 in 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 to 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 3 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 in Pro 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 3 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. 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 Lancashem, I think. Classic. And I was like, wow, I've never been in such a nice hotel. September. It was getting cold in the.

New England, but it was warm here. It's our hottest month. I couldn't believe it. And I remember Jimmy Iveen, Larry Jackson, Ellen, this is, again, 2011, officially a long time ago saying, would you like to be signed to a record contract? To 1111. Yeah. Did you know that was the name of?

God, you know everything. Well, she loves 1111. So does my wife. She loves 1111. It's the number. Jen Aniston, too. John Anderson also likes. It's a good club to be in, the 1111 club.

We're missing the train, I think. Yeah. I got dropped from 1111. 11-11. Whoops. And then Emily, Luther. Luther. 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 was still lying to 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's 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 this beautiful. And Ramirez Canyon, and it was wonderful. It made me fall in love with California. You had all the toys at your disposal, I imagine. I've never been in such a nice studio. It overlooked the ocean.

Went to Nobu, Malibu. Oh, wow, yeah, yeah. It's a booey sushi. Is that still a thing anymore? Oh, my God. I don't know about boo-sushi, but yeah, no boo-malibu. That's still a thing. That's the first-hits-free kind of drug.

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. And I was kind of like a cocky little shit.

I was like, I'm on TV. Yeah. I was feeling myself a little bit. Did it convert to anything on campus? We're like girls more interested in you? I think so. Yeah, sure. It works.

It normally does work. Yeah, it's pretty effective. I found in my mic. Every classic, you know, 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.

I was always odd man out a little bit, the man on the side. And I was stoked. 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. If you deny yourself that, what's the fucking point? I mean, you should go through all the, you got to feel it.

Post getting booted from 1111, you had a bit of doldrums between the Ellen excitement, the selling out the show, graduating them pit bulls. That's 2015. You know, the thing about going to a music college, a lot of people's cloths 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 Interscope label. I will just go to every publisher on Broadway

in New York City and I will pitch my music. And I waited out. side of record labels 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, take that boat in I was talking about before. Have a couple of Akistoli's. Yeah, a 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 Kowanga Boulevard, and they invited me out to that studio, and I just wrote See You Again. It's kind of an anticlimatic end to that story. Well, no, pit bulls in there. He wasn't physically there. Right, 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. That was my contribution to the song. Okay, okay. Yeah. Damn, I haven't heard people bring that one up in a long time. I'd go down memory lane. Not to be confused with, celebrate. Yeah.

It would feel so fine if we took a holiday. That's such an amazing song. What if she had said incorporated Historee into Celebrate? History. That was genius. You speak of level of songwriting there. But I'd say my biggest first. contribution to someone's career artistically was for artists named Trey songs. It was called

Slow Motion. And it was made for the club. I had just written See You Again, which is a piano ballad. Yeah. And then slow motion, I had just gotten out of the studio with DJ Mustard. He was going on his run. I had gotten this 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 see you again, 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. I believe 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.

Really? He wanted me on the song. Such a weird story. Yes. I think he vouched for me. I don't know if that's 100% percent. Is he from New Jersey? I don't think he. He feels like he's from New Jersey. I think his manager's 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. Wow. 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 assigned to Atlantic 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. Just to. And you're young. Yeah, I was 23. I suddenly had money to go get an apartment on 7,950 West Sunset Boulevard, the corner of sunset and style. Oh, and style. That feels serendipitous.

That feels like a song, a lyric. I had a 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 it. my mom would fill me in on everything as if I weren't there.

Yeah, moms like to do that. Yeah. They do it for a while and then luckily they tire of it and then they stop entirely. Well, do people even watch TV anymore? Yeah, exactly. What's next? After that year? You're starting to collaborate with like a ton of people.

I'm sure you could have never imagined even seen at a cafe in yet now you're working with them. Who were you like, oh my God. I was excited just to get in with everybody, big or small. I remember Mike Will, producer, came, told me he wanted to work with me. I remember Fergie. It 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 Gay, which is a fine song. With Megan Trainor. With Megan Trainers. That was also big. And I had no album.

And all of a sudden I had two big songs. see you again and Marvin Gay, 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, this kind of inconsistent and all over the place. And then in the ninth hour, I heard this little loop in my, do-d-d-d-d-dun-d-d-dun-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d- And it's weird to, like, to write a song. You have to, like, not write a song. You have the whole song in your head, and you just, like, reverse-engineer it. So I had,

um, and suddenly just, we don't, we don't talk anymore. We don't talk anymore. I was like, we don't talk anymore. Am I describing 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. But 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 turned that song in.

How about that? All these other songs that they got all these other people to right 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 junior year 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. And I think I know everything. And I remember, you know, Kara DiGuardi. Yeah. She was a judge on American Idol for a while. She's 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 melody is great. These lyrics are ass. You need to get together with someone who knows how to write lyrics. I wrote this email. I'm like, how dare you? Someone who has so much more success to me still. I'm writing the scathing email. Like, you have 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.

Like, he has these enormous songs, but he himself's not big enough for these songs. I'm paraphrasing, but I did read that line. And that's fair, right? You got to take some minutes to learn how to become a pop star. I feel like people are just starting to get 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 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, I think so. I'm going to disappoint you now and I'm going to go to my notes.

Okay. Wow. That's fun. Good for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck, we missed the whole part about Perez Hilton and winning Can You Sing. That's interesting. Paris Hilton.

No, I mean, that's kind of an anticlimactic thing. That's what got the attention. Can you believe that? A hundred thousand 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.

I counted as viral back then. Now it's like you're a failure if you got 100. I know. A hundred thousand people is still a lot of people. Yeah. Crazy. It's so true. Okay, so attention happens.

I'm curious now we're to the part where we earmarked because now you're having to grow into like pop stardom because attention's enormous. It's still, I was looking up stuff on Spotify and this is still. It's streaming very well. Oh, billions, astronomical amount of streams from that song. The 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're 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. Everything 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 tried 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 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 was affecting the epidermis, but it wasn't reaching down past the dermis. So I was showing up to every restaurant like Craigs, which is a very good restaurant, by the way. Monica 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. But as I'm talking to her, I'm realizing like, oh, yeah, she's also a 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 wasn't. I toured with Sean when he just got started. Yeah. Although he did project into superstardom from an early age on. He made the transition.

Yeah. It's not like what you trained for in high school, perhaps. No, what we 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, you know, holler and, oh, he put out a song, I guess I'll listen to it. Like, that's how my brain used to think. Well, how do you know? What the fuck? You know, how would you know that the height of all this massive success, what was happening emotionally? Very, very depressed.

Doesn't matter how much success I had. It's almost like the more success that I had. the sadder I got. Were you feeling fraudulent? Yeah, I was. I stopped feeling fraudulent two years ago. It takes a bit of that. I would be at these Grammys, these Golden Globes, and I would be raising my voice and, you know, putting the game show voice on, and then going back home alone, and just being by myself and then being real with myself. I'm 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. of and the attention of girls. Yeah, I'm sure. That's a nice salve.

That wasn't making me happy either. Right. More fraudulence. 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's 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 tomfoolery. 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 is in 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. Yes. 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 claw 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. Right. 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. Yeah. 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, Kristen, 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. Sure. I'm not going to lie and say that I've never had. I was depressed for the person's birthday. Absolutely. And at 30 years old, it was at the peppermine club, not Delilah, but been there too. I lived in Truesdale.

You did it all. Did it all. And I look around and 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 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 in my life. And I think my music was suffering too. Yeah. It didn't sound as good. Well, nothing was coming from really truth. You would have had to figure out how to write a song that relayed fraudulence. Yeah. 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 I was fake. and you are a product of your environment. So, of course, I wasn't making great.

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 JetBlue, second JetBlue mentioned today. Love JetBlue. I said I was going to New York. You know how people around here were like, oh, yeah, let's get together the 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. 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 and 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 Lou Collie. I have to say quickly, y'all's generation, like no one in my age group growing up knew about a restaurant. I mean, maybe this is also from like a blue color thing. but 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, which for the older people are like, 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. Like no one, my age knows 12 great.

restaurant, you know. But I do think your average is your baseline interest in a great restaurant has just really gone up. Yeah. Well, that's very nice, gives a compliment on the generation. Thank you for the compliment. You'll do a lot of great shit. You drink less. You save money better. Well, not you. I'm an exception. You're a black mark on your generation. Okay, you took her to the restaurant. 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, I will. And I did. Just to prove 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, yeah, I'll be there. And then I would have planned something like way too spectacular. We're going to Paris. You know, like I would have brought in an elephant or some shit. I think would have been tempting to go like, let me show you what life I can provide us. That's what I did with all the other relationships. 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 me a story about their first date with their future husband was flying on the congress. Concord to Paris as a first date.

And I was like, I mean, I don't know. Where do you go from there? How can you possibly evaluate? I could fucking hang with anybody on a Concord flight to Paris. I mean, I can't evaluate whether they're tight in that. I guess, yeah, but boy, you're moving. That's what they would say about the Bachelor and the Bachelorette. No wonder those can't work.

All their dates are that. Heightened. That's not a normal light. That's kind of why I like to work in L.A. I'll always love L.A. L.A. 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 peers doing all the things. 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. It can be like, I don't know. This isn't bad at all. Okay. So then 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 Fetty,

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 don't technically know what's happening, but I know something very magical is happening. Yeah, he's one of my favorite. He's incredible. I can't tell if he gets annoyed when I say that my favorite Christmas album is his

Christmas album, but Journal's 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 in his melody writing, in his songwriting, he can always hear it. I think it's one of 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 to Anderson Pack, who's like, my number one. So talented. He's amazing. Yeah, he's amazing. And to find out how much of his music, like his song with Mac Miller, dang, they didn't mean in person until 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 was so funny. Oh, yeah. He walked into the wrong room. He just lights up every room. He does. You 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 P-P-B-B-B-B-B-B-I-Lob. I love that kick snare combination. It's fun. It's got a grit to it too. It has distortion to it. Distortion, a heavily underused thing while producing music. And pop. To make the drums hit, you layer in like a really crunchy kick snare combination.

So it sounds like, 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. I like that. He has the garnish of grit.

I just did it. I wanted some validation for my word smithery. I know you're withholding. That's why we've been friends for so long. You know when to withhold. I'm here to be honest. I don't think garnish of grit is necessarily the best thing you've come up with. Well, it's mixed messages.

Garnishing grit are like diametrically opposed. We'll circle about it for a little bit. You'll think about if you're going to keep that madded or not. Yeah, exactly. Okay, I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about then the most recent chapter, which is interesting, and of course you found your way there, but 2021 you start going hard on TikTok. I sure do.

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. And one small change made into a song, like if you re-record one little vocal, it could change the trajectory of the entire song. And I always thought that my job here was to teach that

because my mom was a teacher, and 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 and songs? You start with the kick drum. Start there, that's the foundation of your house. And then you add the base,

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. The framing. There you go. Thank you. Yeah. 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 were the young kid in your room, and to find out, it's as simple as the order. Would I start out with reverb? No, no, let's keep that for that is the glaze.

Even the order of things could be so helpful and breakthrough-y for a kid. who's trying to figure 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-sabi. Not wabi-sabi. The other one. We always think it's wabi-sabi and it's not wabi-sabbing. It's not wabberg. Imperfaction, 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. Well, you want to just sound human. No, it's true. It's why AI 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. Yeah, like a neural link set up. Yeah. Yeah. There's 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, 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. It's 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, oops. We'll edit that out. This album that I just finished, that's going to be my fourth album, is a direct response

to all the perfect music that you hear. 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, an AI playlist of bubble music. I'm like, just play popcorn by new edition, 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 without art. Really good. That's the worst headline out of all this. We're almost to whatever's clever. In 2024, I'm servicing my friend Monica right now. I know it's coming. I don't, but I do.

Taylor? Yeah. Okay, so you wrote the lyric, right? Yeah. The lyric on the tortured poets department was we declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist. It was very nice. Yeah, 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. 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, it 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 up 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 is a hit versus really put focus on let'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 acoustic 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 it was inspiration.

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 like 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 let's party. Like how do we not do something together? That would be 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's 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 and 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 of Blood Pop 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 that was so weird. And then I spent all week 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 me. 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 incident 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, it was a video game designer, a very smart person.

He's obviously very talented and has made countless hits and really important by his work for a lot of other artists. I'm always trying to musically explore, so I thought it would 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 doc 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, yeah, when I was asking like, what's your collaboration's 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 at 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 I'm just starting my career in some way. Also, 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 a 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 string samples. I didn't even think about including string samples in a song that we could write. There's singers that will suggest a different melody like Ryan Teter at 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. It was really good at that as 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. Now, I got to say, we just interviewed 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 if he's feeling fear. No, no, no, no. I'm so confident. I have the whole arrangement in my head. Oh, good. My local newspaper, the Star Ledger, told me that I am the second New Jersey native to

sing the national anthem. The boss. 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 roads, like a really warm road sound. Like a road's 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, timpony. Dung, dung, dung, dung, dung, dung, all the string players are going to go, boom. And that's how I imagine it. In the fucking F-16s are, oh, 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 going to sound. I'm glad. I'm so excited to watch it.

Yeah, yeah. These things is arbitrary or as manufacturers, 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. Isn't music so amazing? Yeah. I just love it so much. Now, you're going to go out 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. Is 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 that's in this stupid little swaddle.

Oh my God. Stupid little swaddle me. This is actually way better than that arena. 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, Kristen 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 fucking make them miss everything so they can be with you. That's the time. But you are five, six years out from that. I never 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. Kids can sleep on airplanes. It didn't cry. It's good for them. They get exposed 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. Yes, as early as they can get it. I want to get the big headphones for the baby. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, Charlie, this was delightful. This was downright therapeutic. This is like super fun.

That's what we like to hear. I do got to add whatever is clever. comes out on Lincoln's birthday. Ding, ding, ding, March 27th. A special day for me. Right before flu season ends. How do I know this?

I go to 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 what was wrong. How was your first walk to work? It was my first walk. I mean, you used to walk to work. First two-minute walk. First two-minute commute to work.

How about that? Thank you. And I even got to bring my tea. Why not? And look at this mug. What was the price tag on it? I don't know, but it's good for today. It's gloomy out.

Uh-huh. So this mug has a rainbow coming out and the sun's popping out. out of the clouds. Uh-huh. Peaking out. Underneath? Uh-huh. Careful.

I know. Careful. There's a cloud. There's rain. There's a lot. Don't lose your equilibrium. I know. What I'm 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 and Los Angeles. Yes. And I open my French door and I can smell the rain and I meditate and I general. And then 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 was on. 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 for you. Do you have it on an app, though? My alarm? Yeah. You should. Instead of you having to find a keypad and all that, sure.

To open your fucking window. Yeah. You just pull your phone out of your pocket. Okay, well. Tap, tap, tap. 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. It's one of a 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. Okay.

A lot. Yeah. And that's in my, in my small apartment, I would lose track. Now, the house has proven to be trickier with where I leave my phone. You should get an iPad, you keep by your bedside table that you can turn it off for them. She'll figure out how to lose that too. This is the kind of solution I'm always suggesting, Rob, is like you have designated places you set the thing down. I know, but.

But you're not going to do that. And that's fine. And I've accepted that. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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.

Misplace your phone. Yeah. And you suggested having a spot, having designated spots. Your motto, designated spots. It'll be on my tombstone. Use it designated spots. And Kristen was there too. And she was like, Like, well, not everyone. You know, she was really trying to bridge the gap. Defend you probably. Yeah. Because she too needs 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. Yeah. One time we found her phone, it was so wild.

In like a box, we were returning something. And it was in the box. Thank God we found it. That almost got returned? Yeah. Oh, my Lord. Yeah, that's not a designated spot. That's an interesting designated spot.

No, it's antithetical to the point of a designated spot. If the designated spot's about to travel via the U.S. 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, leashes at the mall. Yeah. But even thinner. Okay. And that's anchored to your nightstand.

And you can travel around your house and usually. 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 eyesore of it, you'd be like, fuck, I'll do designated spots. Yeah, maybe. You're right. This episode was brought to you by designated spots. If I get a dog, then I'll train that dog to do it. You use a 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, come here, Mitzy. Come here, Mitzi. My dog's going to lose the fucking dog. 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. You'll reward him with treats 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 day to Wednesday. Yeah. At first, Anna came over. She slept over the first two nights.

And how did that go? That was fun. Was it so fun? Yeah. Did you drink wine? Yeah, of course. Have you convinced her 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 her? 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 teeth? It's so weird.

So far, it just feels like I'm in somebody else's like really nice house. Like it has not sunk in that all these things are mine. Yeah. That I can poop on the floor if I want. Sure. There's no law against it. And I told you this. The first time I was by myself.

I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And, you know, I had to walk. 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 syndrome is what I'm trying to say. 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's gonna happen You're not allowed to have this

Yeah why I'm not This isn't for me like I don't deserve it So and 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 Christ. Modest. You've been living in a modest department. Yeah. Irony 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'm. I am right now. Yep. That's true. It's just weird to be in there and feel. Yeah, it's just a weird mental game. It's hard to accept.

It's hard to wrap your 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 L.A. 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 you're 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. Unworthiness.

Yeah. Or 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 thing. 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 house? Is that going to sound so braggy?

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 L.A., New York, San Francisco. It's very specific cities where you can't afford a house at all. Yeah, yeah. Homeownership is limited to a very few. Here, but that's rare.

Yeah, in Michigan, most of my friend's 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. I remember Bree and I sleeping on the floor in front of the fireplace because the heat wasn't on yet.

Yeah. And 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 all have houses. Well, it's 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 3,000 square foot house on an acre,

That was always a dude in his peak earning 55. He had been at the company for 35 years, you know? Yeah. So my parents have a, oh, I should say, I'm on meth right now. Okay. On D? Yeah, I'm on D. Nice.

It's a good ride. I have a cold and it's fine because I'm on meth. Remember when you took a drug test and it showed up a little bit of meth? Yes. Yeah. You had, you were on D. Yes. Yeah.

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. Also, I just, I slept last night. Yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

So my parents, they have this shocking, this big superstition. Okay. that when you move in it 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 sides yeah i mean how do these things start it's like your cup runneth over it's like a way to like start like you're bringing in like abundance and and i and you know i was like oh boy okay but but you have a nice new range. You don't want to get hot milk all over everything. I know. I was like, I'm going to like, you know, have this like, boiled milk everywhere. Yeah. But it was, it's so important to them. Like, they brought it up so many times. 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. It was getting in my head because I don't have a small enough pot right now to do it.

Yeah. And, and so I was like, can I do it? tomorrow my mom's like uh like i could tell she kind of didn't like that yeah what could she do yeah um so i did do it good i mean my my point to her would have been like if you're gonna do it do it right do it right now no no i didn't do it that day oh jesus mug and now i'm superstitious no no no i didn't have i didn't have the pot oh you should have your neighbors i asked no i know but it needed to be really small because like then i'm pouring so much milk well you 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 and waste it. 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. Feels like a little bit of a workaround. I will continue. Why?

Well, because if your cup runneth over. The whole point is abundance. Yeah. And you're going to heat up a thimble with a drop of milk in it. No, no, no. No, it's the, it's the spilling over. It's not the amount 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 in my head, maybe it's like you work for it. You work hard. And then your cup run it 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 mom. Okay, call her. Yeah, because she's not going to know. That's what it'll be fun about it. I know. She won't know. We'll see if it lines up with what I love.

I wonder if my dad's there too. No, he's at work because he's retired. We're Monica. Hi, Mom. You're on the fact check, okay? Hi, Nirmie. Hey. Mom, we have a question.

question about the milk superstition. Is there a back story 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've just always done it. I mean, I think it has to do with some sort of hindered tradition.

Some kind of spiritual meaning. I don't really know exactly. Okay. Honestly, I don't know. 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. Monica was kind of free form guessing, and I wasn't sure that it was the right thing.

I mean, I figured it's like your cup. 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. My mom said that's right.

Well, of course it means to her. You guys are the same. 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, I 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 tell me that.

Oh, you're going to put your whole oven on a slant. 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 got my pot. I boiled the milk. I sent a video to them. Okay. Good. So then it was like that. I did it 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 you're sending 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 their burner. Yeah,

they did. They did because they also respect cleanliness. Anyway, so that was a bit, that was a big superstition checked off the list. Thank God. Yeah. Literally, thank God. Thanks to the gods. Thanks the gods, the many gods. And that is true in the times. 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. He goes to the quote temple. But you do give off, like you give fruit. You give like offerings to the gods. Yeah, 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? Right.

What it really felt like was three weeks. Now, I've had it where it felt like two weeks. 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 that bag would not get there. So I heated them. I'm like, well, I got to bring a bag.

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, flag 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 5 a.m. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, 5 a.m.

because I'm on L.A. time. That's 2 a.m. for me. Yeah. And you know my pledge on this, this is my pledge for this, this journey acting again is like, I am not going to question anything. Yeah, which I respect. I'm just not. I'm, and then, but then they say luckily the pickup so early because we're shooting on marathon, which is a different key. Oh. Which I just drove through 20 minutes before. So I flipped a bitch. I had it up to marathon got my own hotel. Oh.

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 7 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. And again, it's an entire day to get back to L.A. So if I wanted to go back to L.A., I would have gone an entire day to get there. And then I would have been there for one day and then I would have gone on an entire day.

That wouldn't make sense. Right. I did feel like, I think my family member is 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. Whatever. So I leave at noon. Here's some guilt.

Yeah, I was just like, Kristen might probably would have flown home in that little gap. Well, she, yeah. 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 have to order it an hour and a half ahead of time. It's a 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 done? Is the head on it? I hope not. But probably they like to leave the head on it.

Yeah. I don't need that part. No. They like to put an apple on it to dress it up. Why do they do that? Maybe to dress it up. No. Or maybe their teeth look so gross.

They're like, shove something in there. Oh. I don't know what's going to have that. Well, you're not eating the face. But maybe it like sinks into the body. Okay. I don't want to talk about that. Anyways, let's not get it.

Next. We didn't even get it. Now, we know the only reason we can really justify like we got to shoot some Ted Seeger's content. Oh, right. We can't be together. Smart. So I book an airboat tour through the Everglades.

Okay. 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's song. Here comes Amos. Oh, Amos Moses was a cage. Yeah, we just talked about that recently. We don't need to do that again.

Oh. On an alligator for living. I'll just knock him in the head with the stump. Some Louisiana and they all going to get you, Amos. So I hear that song. This is the grocery song. Yeah, horse rass. Yeah.

Which is all about a guy who wants the alligators. So I want to do a Ted Seeger's Amos. Here come Amos commercial. Okay. So on the drive out to this airboat tour, we're like, okay, in order of like what we hope can happen. Like, hopefully we see some alligators and we can get the beer can next close to it. Oh, okay.

And then we go, I wonder if there's any way this guy will let us drive the airboat. Oh, God. While drinking some seagers. Of course he let you. Well, hold on. Okay. We're like, that's the pie in the sky fantasy, right? Okay.

Mm-hmm. So we meet the dude at the gas station. We follow him to this little fucking pallet that's sitting on the shoreline and there's the big fan boat. You know, it's got the huge. huge, huge propeller in back and then this big 4-54 big block motor in it. And the dude's awesome right away. He says pretty quickly, you're in recovery, right? And he's from there.

He was Nicaraguan. Oh, cool. But grew up in Miami. And he said, you're in recovery. And I said, oh, yeah, yeah. We both are. In fact, we want to shoot a bunch of stuff for this NAB. And he's like, oh, yeah, man, I'm in recovery too.

Oh, amazing. And I was like, oh, fuck, yeah. So this dude had been sober for, I think, two or three years. Ah, good for him. We're whipping through the fucking Everglades. The amount of birds overhead, it's so otherworldly. I'm, and 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 look at the other videos. Because we had to fucking learn to drive. Oh, wow.

Oh, my God. So that's how you drive it? Yes, so you have this 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 kind of easy to drive once you got the hang of the stick. Yeah.

You're not turning left or right. You're going backward or forward to go left or right. Interesting. Okay, I'm going to, Aaron. It's always epic. There you guys. It's all right. This is all right.

I, you guys are such. boys it is so funny this like I I don't I don't I mean this as a compliment yeah this looks so boring like like 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 on earth do you drive that no oh my god I think different I'm really not at all interested oh yeah 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. I know. See, that's the difference. Yes. 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, go give it a shot. And then Aaron and I flew an airplane and land it. When you 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. We 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 happening? That's the thing that happens to me. Yes, and I have an immediate challenge in front of me. We were saying like, would we try to drive a cruise ship? Oh. Is there a video like of the boat not from inside? No, because we would be standing in the Everglitz.

I know, but I didn't know if you got any. Oh, right. I have video of another fanboat 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. But you can't see the extent.

And you don't even know what an airboat slash fan 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. by steering the wind coming off that huge fan. That's cool. Yeah. Ish. And you can drive it over land. That's what's cool about it.

You can go 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 really 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? No, but I would have. You should up. 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 different highways. 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. do it. It was like the first, was like, was I not supposed to do that? Yeah. And she said, no, that's a

something lane. There's a little sign. I was like, well, I don't have good eyes. I didn't say that. Yeah, smart. Yep. I can't see. That's their, that's their fault. That makes sense. I just I 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 it. was like, no, I do. And then she was like, she like 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, uh, sorry. I'm really sorry. And she let me off with a warning. Good, good, good, good, good. So that was scary.

I hate getting, I don't like getting, you get pulled over a lot. So you, I haven't pulled over in a while. Let's, let's knock on one of them. That's about the first time I've ever wanted to knock on wood. Oh, wow. Okay. So that was that. Okay.

Then we went out, the restaurant, Monica, half of it's 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 Marcella was talking about. It's just like the vibe, the way the men are dressed.

Yeah. It's so upscale. It's so cool. And it's, but there's upscale that's like fucking there's no rhythm to it. Like you can go upscale Connecticut, upscale New York. 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. 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 cop running over and it happened naturally.

Oh, wow. We'll leave it there for some good luck. Yeah. That's north too. What? That's north too. Oh, really good. And east.

It's northeast. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. meant to be. Can you do that on purpose? I didn't. I didn't. And it is milk, right?

What is it? There is milk in it. It's tea with milk in it. Wow. Wow. My dad. My dad did that. That's a nice framing.

It's like when you spill, it's like, ah, 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 Fax. Now, first off, first and foremost, he performed at the Super Bowl, as he told us he was going to do.

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 horns. Yeah. He said a choir.

I think that was there. multiple people, musicians were like, that's the best, I think that's the best you can do. Oh, good. Yeah, it was really good. You know, I've, I've sing at sporting events. Oh, you have? I've seen the national anthem twice at sporting events. By yourself?

No, in my chorus. Okay. I was going to say. Still counts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It still counts. But I couldn't see you standing up by yourself and singing in the national. Never.

Because you won't sing in here. No, I won't. So it seemed really out of. keeping with what I know about you. 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's song? Right. By. Robin Thick and Farrell got to give it up. Oh, I'm sorry. Marvin Gay's song has got to give it up.

Blurred lines is the song. Yeah. And the gay estate was awarded seven. $7.3 million after successfully arguing that the songs groove and feel 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, yeah. Okay.

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 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-corps, on guitar. You can play 80% of the rock music that's ever. It's just like the tempo's a little different, the pace is a little different, but it's really just going back and forth between these three chords. So, you know, it's, yeah, it's hard to. I'm sure it has to be very obvious. Well, Blurred Lines is that song. If you listen to them back to back, there's really no.

Right. And I worship for El. Me too. So no. And we had no shade to him. Robin Thick on the pod. Yes. In that same vein, when Charlie was, 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, Sue Su Studio sounds like Prince. Sounds like 1989.

So we were talking about that. Prince was first. We didn't, we weren't sure, but it was 1984. And then Phil Collins was 1985. So very quickly. And then Purple Rain is 8 minutes and 41 seconds. There's a shorter 7 inch, 7 inch. You know what that means?

No. That's a 45. So your 33s are 12 inches wide and your 45s are 7 inches. So 7 inch or 12 inch. Oh, okay. Yeah. A shorter 7 inch edit often used for radio is 4 minutes and 5 seconds. I think that's what we all grew up listening to.

Okay. And then live, the song frequently exceeded 12 minutes, with some performances lasting over 19 minutes. That's a long time for a song. That's cool to see in person. It might be too long for me. Really? You know, I start getting like, when will this end feelings? Oh, my God.

Limited a dish, 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 Malbu? I looked it up. It is. was open yesterday. Oh, okay. It's spelled BUI. Okay. Oh, the name of the host of the New Jersey Radio Show 101.1 W. CBS FM in the 90s. The morning hosts were Ron Lundy and Harry Harrison.

Harry Harrison. Do you think that was his real name? Probably not. I don't know. It sounds a little bit like Dallas rains. It does. Also, Harry and the Henderson's. Maybe it was a nod. Yeah. Maybe he'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 him home. They hit him with the car? I believe that's how they came. Yeah. I think that's how he came to live in the house.

And they hit him with the car and then they kidnapped him? No, 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 what? It's a film. Oh, it's a film. It's a film. It's neither a movie or a show.

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 D kicked in, I was sneezing and blowing my nose so much and I thought of you so much because I was like, this is one, so annoying.

Isn't it the worst? Too embarrassing. Yeah. And Daxus is all the time. And Aaron does it even worse. Oh, my God. And 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 water's in there. Yeah. Or I'm sneezing. Like you have to blow your nose all the time. Yeah, all the time. Okay.

Now, Rumson town, the town he's from, he said at 7,000 people. He was right. About 7,200 to 7,300 residents. You really nailed that. He really did nail it. Is Vin Diesel from New Jersey? No. he's not. Where is he from? He's from Alameda County, California, but then later moved to New York

with his fraternal twin brother Paul. Oh. Yeah. Oh my God. His mom was an astrologer. We should have a mom. His life sounds interesting. Now, the Japanese word 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. Translates to golden joinery. That's the thing I left out. Aaron and I watched the smashing machine. We're also 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.

And Smosh is a, 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. You did. Yeah. When I had all those millions of jobs. Yeah. One of them was for Smosh.

Someone I did improv with worked for Smosh. And I, you know, needed a job. And so he got. So I wrote little articles for Smosh for a long time. Oh, you did. Yeah, like 10 funniest moments from SpongeBob, 10, like those types of things. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I did that for a while.

And I forgot all about it. Oh. Former employer. Okay. Is Bruce Springsteen from Ansberry Park? So born in Long Branch and raised in Freehold. Oh, Asbury. Asbury Park.

Okay. Yeah. Asberries. No, as. Asbury. 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 says that he was born in Long Branch and raised in Freehold. So that's not saying anything about it. But then it also says that specifically Springsteen is Asbury 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. Jay. Okay.

Rare letter to start a word with. Jay is really small, only has three. Wow, I had a hunch. Wow. Okay, do you want to guess? Juxtaposition. Yes, that's one. Oh, my God, if you get these.

Jurisprudence. No, but in that vein, in that category. Well, judicial? Yes, but it's a version of that word. No, that's adding one. All right, what is it? Judicious. Judicious.

Yeah, wow. Okay, we're kind of, I'm going to say we're 1.5 for two. No, I'm going to give 1.8. Okay, wow, that's generous. 1.8. And then the last one. I'll never get. No, you'll get.

Should I give you a hint? Yeah, give me some kind of a hint. It's a state of being, a positive state of being. Ooh, jubilant? Jubilant? Yes. Oh. Really?

Good show. I was very impressed. That was so fun. It's jubilant? Yeah, jubilant. Jubilant. Yeah, I don't say it right. Wow, that was really good.

Fun. I'm impressed. Oh, thank you. I love one. I impress you. And that's it for Charlie. Juxtaposition, 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 Sheen in where I had a really strong idea of what they were going to be. And then 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. All right.

Love you.