Charlie Puth's Homecoming Was Also a Victory Lap

The mega-hit 2015 single “See You Again,” from the film Furious 7, credits four songwriters, three producers, and two featured vocalists, with Charlie Puth’s name appearing in each role. Pop songs are almost always a team effort, but the best ones need a heart beating at the center to make them connect with millions of people at any given time. For “See You Again,” Charlie Puth BM ’13 provided that heartbeat.

Listen to Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again," featuring Charlie Puth:

At this year’s Career Jam event, Puth was given the 2025 Alumni Achievement Award and served as the day’s keynote speaker, during which he sat for a candid discussion with his one-time teacher Prince Charles Alexander, professor of music production and engineering, about his career. The pop star, songwriter, and producer also shared stories behind his biggest hits, including “See You Again,” which was 2015’s biggest selling song around the world and has racked up over 2.1 billion streams on Spotify.

“This feels like office hours in 2012,” Alexander said, referencing their meetings when Puth was a student, “but we got a couple hundred people watching us this time.” In fact, that number was closer to a thousand, as the Berklee Performance Center, which seats 1,215, was packed with students, many of whom had been camped out in line outside the building all morning.

And while Puth has released three studio albums, won dozens of awards, and cowritten and/or coproduced songs for artists including Justin Bieber, 5 Seconds of Summer, and Katy Perry since his classroom days, he was quick to say, “But it feels like I'm still a student. And I'm not saying that because you all are here right now. I walk around campus with my little ball cap on, and I literally feel like I'm going to Harmony 1."

Making Your Own Success

This level of humble candor was on display throughout the whole event, with Puth taking every opportunity to relate his own experiences to those of the students in the audience. It was clear he wanted to make sure the students believed that success, however they defined it for themselves, was something achievable. “Everything that I had, every great thing that I had at Berklee, you all have now—and maybe even more,” he said. He went on to stress that the biggest asset a musician can have is their own individuality. “We want to know what you as an individual would put out, because there's only one of each one of us in here. Everybody in here has the capability of making a number-one record—if that's what you want to do.”

It was an apt message particularly for Career Jam, a day stuffed with events, panels, workshops, and networking opportunities aimed at connecting students with the major players from every corner of the industry.

The Truth According to Puth

Puth also stressed that a key part to being a successful songwriter is to focus on artistry, not chasing trends, and above all, to own your story. When Alexander asked about how Puth was able to write a song as powerful as “See You Again” basically on demand by the record label, his answer was simple: “I tell the truth. . . . It’s very hard for people to critique something when you tell the truth.”

In the case of that song in particular, Puth reflected on the tragic circumstances that inspired his lyrics. “My friend—it's kind of a sad story but kind of uplifting in a way. He had passed away on the [Massachusetts Avenue] bridge,” he shared, adding that he’d met this friend during his first year at Berklee, and how he’d always been so encouraging, nearly to the point of predicting the future. “He always told me . . . I was going to write a song that was piano based and a lot of people were going to know it, and it was going to be in a movie.” Of course, neither of them could know this song would come with great loss, but in a way, the song became a fitting tribute to his friend’s legacy.

While this particular inspiration was rooted in personal tragedy, Puth highlighted how being at Berklee and in the arts-centric city of Boston is a particularly special place to pursue a career in music.  “Just being able to walk down the Berklee Beach [outside the 160 Massachusetts Avenue building] and cross Mass. Ave., and people are playing their instruments while they're crossing the street—there's inspiration everywhere,” he said. “I mean, it's a bit on the nose, but like, where else can you get that?”