His biography on Atlantic’s press site was updated and includes a lot of information about the album.
On the lyrical front, Voicenotes is an album that is largely about Puth’s struggle to find a normal relationship when his own life has hardly been normal since finding multiplatinum success, and the anxiety that pursuit has induced. “I wanted it to be a story of my travels from the East Coast to the West Coast and how my growing fame has affected my mind in good and bad ways,” he says. The first three singles — “Attention,” “How Long,” and “Done For Me” featuring Kehlani — cover that territory. “Whenever I met anybody, they often knew more about me than I knew about myself,” he says. “I’d never dealt with anything like that before.” Songs like “LA Girls,” “Like A Boy,” and “Slow It Down” detail different aspects of the rarified life of someone who feels like he should be enjoying the glittering lifestyle of fabulous parties and ample romantic opportunities, but just doesn’t — something Puth addresses on self-acceptance anthem “The Way I Am,” which opens with the following lines: “Maybe I’m a get a little anxious / Maybe I’m a get a little shy / Cuz everybody’s trying to be famous / And I’m just trying to find a place to hide”).
“The Way I Am” is being released tomorrow May 3rd along with the new album cover.