"Beat Yourself Up" Lyrics & Meaning VERIFIED by Charlie Puth | @genius

We probably threw everything in the kitchen sink into the production and started taking things out. Because the intro used to be... One, two, three, four. It's like, it's like too long. No one has the attention span in these Tik Tok-y and Gen Alpha days. Seat Yourself Up is a song that I wrote as a message to myself and a message for a friend that needed to hear it. It started in my brain. I knew the tempo was going to be around here, and I thought that the key of D major was probably a bit too low, so I transposed it in my head to F sharp major, which is kind of like a Whitney Houston, like really bright key. Took the fake strings off. Maybe the melodies... And then it was just a matter of extracting what was in my head and putting it into Pro Tools. Since you were a boy, you took the weight of the world, and held on to it till you fell to the ground. Like you had no choice, you did it for your little girl, so she would never feel the way you do now. When I say, since you were a boy, you took the weight of the world, I might be speaking to a mirror and looking right back at me, but I'm also talking to my friend who really at the time needed to hear this. What I was trying to accomplish with that verse of the picture that I was trying to paint is to make it universal enough where anybody like yourself could relate to the sentiment of someone, a parent, an aunt, uncle, brother, sister, who would literally do anything for you just to make sure that you feel safe and happy. What keeps me grounded knowing that I'm going to be okay, no matter how things seem to pile up and it seems like mercury is in retrograde forever, I keep my family close. I'm fortunate enough to have a really wonderful family who's always got me. I kind of just take a trip back to 2014, 2015, and remember what it was like to go to Los Angeles for the first time and feel what it was like to just feel like I'd made it, and why I do what I do. I do what I do for people. I love people's reactions, their visceral reactions to music. You can move a crowd or a small room with a chord progression. I never want to forget or become jaded when it comes to music. I'm naturally hard on myself. I really believe we all are naturally hard on ourselves. I feel like we were less hard on ourselves maybe 20 years ago when we didn't know constantly about people's whereabouts and everything that was going on in the world all at once. I think we compare each other's success to our success. Well, he's done that, and I haven't done that yet. Then a month later, you get to do what he or she is doing, and then you're like, well, now I want what this person has. It's kind of a never-ending cycle. You just, again, like I said before, have to remember why you're doing things. You're doing things. In this case, I'm doing things because I love music. When you're 17 and you're feeling so bold, then realize you gotta do what you're told. 17-year-old Charlie was definitely not bold. I always wanted to be a bit more bold, but I'm always a natural introvert. 17-year-old Charlie wanted to be more bold, but 17-year-old Charlie was just getting the courage to sing in front of people for the first time. I think that was right around the time where I started to do that. Now you're 23, and you're only worth what you sold. But my mother said some things are worth more than gold. I got a ton of great advice from my mom. I joke around and say that my mom was my first A&R, and still today. A song will be doing really well, and she's like, I don't like this part here. I like this part. You should have put this part first. I'm like, I can't really change it now. It's out. Going to this bridge, I actually had the whole orchestra, all the brass section there the same day, and had no lyrics to the bridge. If you listen to it, it sounds like the most bare part of the song. It used to be jam-packed with instruments. If I stand by my rule of every four or eight bars, something, not dramatic, but just a small change has to happen. For my music, and this song in particular, I want it to be here, here, rise it up, down, and I consider the bridge to be down here. I have almost barbershop quartet vibes. It's me doing a bunch of oohs, stacking them, and figuring out the lyrics after the fact. It's kind of like when a doctor gives you medicine, and it's like, all right, do you feel any better? It's like the song up until that point is just all wrapped up into a giant, lack of a better term, pill. I'm like, do you feel any better? If not, listen to it a couple more times kind of thing. I feel like there's so much darkness in the world right now. I mean, it's fairly obvious. Anybody who listens to this can jump into the portal of a three-minute break, like a breather from the outside world. I do feel like music and art in general is supposed to be an escape.