It’s about time! On Sunday (April 28) Charlie Puth finally appeared to respond to the unexpected shout-out he got on Taylor Swift‘s Billboard 200 No. 1 album The Tortured Poets Department. And while his nod to the lyrical reference on the album’s title track was low-key, the “Light Switch” singer’s Instagram Story post said it all with one simple image.
After Swift posted an image of the herself in the studio with TTPD scrawled in sharpie across the CD version of the sprawling collection, Puth put his own spin on it by grabbing one of the other studio images of a smiling Swift at work with the album’s title scrawled in black marker across the front. The Story didn’t have any sound or message from Puth, 32, but it was appeared to be Puth’s way of subtly thanking Swift for the kind words.
On the song Swift sings, “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate/ We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist,” she sings on the title track that many fans have speculated features veiled references to Taylor reported brief 2023 fling with The 1975’s Matty Healy.
Puth’s image came from Swift’s celebration of TTPD‘s record-setting run after Taylor learned that the album marked her 14th debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, tying her with Jay-Z for the most No. 1s among solo artists in the nearly-70-year history of the chart; only the Beatles, with 19, have more No. 1s.
The Tortured Poets Department earned 2.61 million equivalent album units in the U.S. for the week week ending April 25, with traditional album sales (purchases of digital download albums, CDs, vinyl LPs and cassettes) making up 1.914 million of that sum. Vinyl comprised an astonishing 859,000 of the total, with the deluxe, 31-track deluxe version generating 891.34 million on-demand official streams.