Last month, Elton John announced a new album called The Lockdown Sessions, which features a bunch of collaborations with high-profile names, some of which have already been released (Dua Lipa, Rina Sawayama, Years & Years, most recently Lil Nas X) and many of which have not (Eddie Vedder, Stevie Wonder, Stevie Nicks, etc.). Today, John is sharing his team-up with Charlie Puth, “After All.”

In an interview with Apple Music, John talked about how he met Puth in a restaurant, which led to their collab:

I was in L.A. in March 2020. I’d just got back from Australia where we’d done our last show on the farewell tour. We haven’t done one since. I was in a restaurant in Los Angeles and someone said, “Charlie Puth’s here.” And he came up and we sat down and I’d never met him. I’ve been a big fan. And I interviewed him on my radio show, eventually… then we just talked music and he said, I live at so-and-so address. And it’s four doors away from where I live. So basically he said, “Well, I have a studio. If you feel like writing anything, come up.” So I had nothing else to do. So I went up to Charlie’s house one afternoon and we wrote this song, in very quick time.

He also talked about how he wrote the song melody-first:

I don’t know where it came from because I always write to lyric. So this song is one of the first songs in my whole life, where I’ve just written a melody first. There’s two tracks on the album. This one and the Stevie Wonder track were written melody first, all the way through straightaway like this one. God knows how it happened. I don’t question how it happened, but lucky enough, I was with him and he just finished it off. It was just so much fun. It was done very quickly. And then, as a result of this, the next day I went next door to my publishers, media publisher’s house and did services. And then I had two tracks. And then that started the whole kind of idea of being a session musician again, and that kicked the lockdown thing off. If anyone doesn’t like this record, blame it on Charlie and here’s his address.

Listen to “After All” below.

The Lockdown Sessions is out 10/22 via Interscope. Pre-order it here.