Songfacts®:

• Here, Charlie Puth sings of his desire to take a relationship to the next level.
  
  Baby, would you ever want to be my girlfriend?
  I don't wanna play no games
  This is more than just a phase
  
  Things are heating up and Puth wants to make a long-term commitment to the girl.
• Puth said in a press release that he's not good at communicating; he prefers to express his feelings in his music, and this falsetto funk song is an example of that. "The song is about being persistent and letting someone know that your feelings for them aren't going to just go away," he explained. "But rather, they're always going to be there, and you can't sleep another night until you have that person by your side every day. But it's really intense to say all that out loud, so I just put it in a song to make it a little easier for myself."
• Puth wrote the lyrics with his regular collaborator J Kash while driving around Studio City. The pair collaborated on the VoiceNotes hit singles "Attention," "How Long" and "The Way I Am."
• Puth made the song while traveling in planes and buses on tour. He recorded the bridge vocals 10 minutes before he went on stage for a concert.
• The song's music video is a goofy vignette about Charlie Puth's perfectionist preparations for a dinner date. Things start going wrong when the eager crooner burns the home cooked meal so ends up having to order takeout. Meanwhile Charlie's date is running late and when she does show up, she finds the singer dancing on his own in the kitchen.
  
  "I've never released a music video that wholeheartedly showed my personality," said Puth of the clip. "The video for 'Girlfriend' is the first time I've truly been myself in every aspect. I can't cook and I'm an absolute nerd. It's also meant to visually represent what I want people to do when they hear my music and that's to have fun in their very own way."