Charlie Puth Is Trying to Start His Own Drama With Selena Gomez, and It’s Backfiring

As Taylor Swift once wrote, another day, another drama. While Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber have buried the axe (for now), Charlie Puth has decided to insert himself into the narrative, and it’s not making him look very good.

The whole mess started way back in 2015–2016, when Gomez and Puth collaborated on “We Don’t Talk Anymore.” There were rumors at the time that the two of them were hooking up and/or dating, since Gomez and Justin Bieber were broken up and Justin was actually starting to see Hailey. Gomez denied that she and the “One Call Away” singer were ever more than just friends, but the next year Puth released his song “Attention,” about a girl seemingly stringing him along.

Speaking of stringing along, Puth played coy in the press afterward, trying to have it both ways: being a gentleman who wouldn’t gossip, but also…maybe shading Gomez in interviews. “I don’t kiss and tell, but the only way a song like [“We Don’t Talk Anymore”] can come across as real is if there’s something else going on behind the scenes,” he told Billboard in 2018. “And that’s what was happening [with Gomez]. Very short-lived, very small, but very impactful. And it really messed me up. I’m trying to put this the best way possible: It wasn’t like I was the only person on her mind. And I think I knew that going in—what I was getting myself into.” 

But okay, we all make mistakes, everyone grew up after that. Right? No. Kinda out of nowhere, on March 25, 2023, Puth decided to bring it all up again and tweeted, “Attention is about what you think it’s about.” He quickly deleted it, but you can see a screenshot here. 

This quickly sent fans back to the lyrics of “Attention,” which are honestly kind of run-of-the-mill “I’m annoyed at this manipulation” vibes, but also a video in which Puth speaks more explicitly about how…well, let’s just be explicit: Selena wouldn’t sleep with him, and he got frustrated.