Last summer, Japanese alternative singer Joji released “Glimpse of Us,” the lead single for his third studio album Smithereens. Although Joji had achieved fame in the 2010s from YouTube skits and parody songs using stage names like Filthy Frank and Pink Guy, he had never earned the acclaim that came with “Glimpse of Us,” which peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. However, before he created and released the song, it was actually meant to be performed by Charlie Puth instead.
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During a recent interview with Sirius XM on June 3, Puth was asked if there were any songs that he passed on that he regretted. Immediately, he recalled “Glimpse of Us,” which was sent to him while he was on tour in early 2022.
“I look in her eyes and that’s where I find a glimpse of us by Joji, they sent that song for me originally,” Puth revealed. “I was in the middle of tour, and it sounds ridiculous, [but] I didn’t have a couple of weeks to really listen to it. I remember listening to it on my phone being like, ‘That’s a really nice sounding song, I’ll get to it.’ Then two weeks later it came out and it was, like, the biggest song in the world… You can’t win ’em all.”
But, while Puth retrospectively wishes he would have claimed “Glimpse of Us” for himself, he also conveyed that Joji’s performance of it is likely better than how he would have sung it.
“I don’t know if I would’ve been amazing on that,” he admitted. “I remember hearing it and I thought to myself, ‘I have to sing it over-enunciated.’ Like I did on ‘See You Again’ (Puth’s 2015 smash hit with Wiz Khalifa). I think the charm of the Joji version is he sang it kind of relaxed. He didn’t enunciate it as much, and I think people gravitated toward that. I actually have it saved on my playlist. I like it a lot.”
Much of the success of “Glimpse of Us” can also be attributed to its virality on TikTok, where it has been used as the background song in over 975,000 videos on the app. The song’s accompanying album Smithereens would eventually reach No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart in late 2022.
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