Charlie Puth may be a tech-savvy music producer, but when it comes to songwriting, he proudly sticks to pen and paper. The 33-year-old hitmaker revealed in a recent interview that he handwrites all of his lyrics using a Bic 4-Color Pen, a simple tool he claims helps him “see songs in color” and emotionally connect with them on a deeper level.
“I never type lyrics on my phone or a computer,” Puth told The Hollywood Reporter. “It just feels like the song isn’t a song if I type it—it needs my personality.” For him, each ink color evokes a different feeling or function: red is used to scratch out bad lines, green highlights the strongest ones, and blue taps into emotional tones. “Green means go,” he explained, noting that it often marks lyrics that make it into the final cut.
Puth’s creative toolkit is surprisingly minimal. He travels everywhere with his Bic pen, a stack of notebooks, and a compact keyboard. Whether he’s on a plane or backstage before a show, these tools help him feel grounded and expressive. “Sometimes I feel like I can’t talk. But if I sit at a keyboard and play while I’m speaking, the words come easier,” he admitted. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
He also teased that he’s been working on new music—songs that will reflect how his life has changed over the past decade. “There will be a lot of things I haven’t sung about yet,” he said. “Life for me is much different than it was 10 years ago when One Call Away or See You Again came out, so there’s some things to say. And I am constantly inspired by my surroundings, both musically and otherworldly.”
Charlie Puth’s process might be analog, but it’s clearly working. In an industry racing toward automation and AI, his dedication to authenticity—right down to the ink he writes with—shows that sometimes, the old ways still hold the most power.
