Dr. Puth and Mrs. Dr. Puth
Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
If you’re Charlie Puth, life is good. You’re going to perform the national anthem at the Super Bowl. You have a new album out in March of next year. Your wife, Brooke Sansone, is having a baby. People randomly love when you explain music theory on Instagram and TikTok. In principle, this is one person in our world who should be sleeping soundly, but no. Something is amiss. In fact, something has gone terribly wrong. Elon Musk’s ongoing rocket launches in Santa Barbara, California, are creating sonic booms. And on December 10, Puth made a desperate plea to Musk using the latter’s own platform. “Hi @elonmusk…these sonic booms have gotten progressively louder since they started launching the rockets in Santa Barbara,” he wrote. “This one at 3am today felt like 150-160 dB, violently shook our whole house, and really frightened my pregnant wife. I hope they do not get louder :/”
The whole tone here is unexpectedly sad, from the pensive ellipses at the start of the tweet to the slanty face at the end. That Puth would go so far as to cite the decibel volume is to show that he means business. This isn’t just “Charlie Puth’s wife,” it’s Professor Puth’s wife. Being a new parent is an exercise in sleeplessness; they don’t need reason to be awake in the middle of the night before their baby is born. Unfortunately, if we’ve learned anything from public appeals for Musk to stop doing whatever he’s doing, the tech mogul just doubles down and makes everything worse.
