Shawn Mendes is renegotiating his relationship with fame and success. Though he’s only 26, the Canadian singer-songwriter has been famous for more than a decade – he first came to prominence in 2013 on Vine, a video-sharing platform that doesn’t even exist any more. Since then, he’s built a career that’s staggeringly successful by any metric.
Each of his four previous studio albums entered the Billboard 200 at Number One, while four of his singles have amassed more than two billion Spotify streams apiece. One of these, 2019’s ‘Señorita’, is a sultry Latin pop duet with his then-partner Camilla Cabello (they split in 2021, but remain close friends). But the others – 2015’s ‘Stitches’, 2016’s ‘Treat You Better’ and 2017’s ‘There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back’ – are more typical of Mendes’ peppy, guitar-led style. Pop-rock king John Mayer has always been one of his biggest influences.
Becoming mega-famous as a teenager hasn’t come without its challenges. In 2021, Mendes was seven shows into his ‘Wonder’ world tour when he announced he was cancelling the remaining 80 dates to focus on his mental health. “After speaking with my team and working with an incredible group of health professionals, it has become more clear that I need to take the time I’ve never taken personally, to ground myself and come back stronger,” he said at the time.
Mendes has also faced a constant swirl of cruel and unnecessary speculation about his sexuality. He addressed this on stage in Red Rocks, Colorado, at the end of October when he told fans: “The real truth about my life and my sexuality is that man, I’m just figuring it out like everyone. And it feels really scary because we live in a society that has a lot to say about that. I’m trying to be really brave and just allow myself to be a human and feel things. And that’s all I really want to say about that for now.”
When NME meets Mendes in London a couple of months before this cathartic moment, he is still getting used to being public-facing again. “It feels a lot, and also it feels different,” he says of being back in pop star mode. “I think this time around, just the music itself asks for an entirely different environment and energy. Even just walking into the room with all of you here after [my gig] last night, I think you guys just have a different energy around me because of the music. So that’s cool. I like that.”
The day before this interview, he performed every track from his intimate, folk-leaning new album ‘Shawn’, which is out today (November 15), at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane. The stage was softened with candles and vintage rugs as a relaxed-looking Mendes sang, smiled and shared stories. He also played the harmonium, an organ-like instrument that he mastered by learning traditional Kirtan songs, which signify devotion in several Indian religions.
Before he started work on ‘Shawn’, this act of playing an instrument for the pure joy of it helped Mendes to reconnect with his creativity. “I wasn’t sitting at a piano making a pop song, I was singing something [that’s] 10,000-plus years old and it just completely took me out of my own head,” he says.
While writing ‘Shawn’, Mendes was inspired by classic singer-songwriters including Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and James Taylor. Fittingly, the album ends with a heartfelt rendition of ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen, one of Canada’s most influential musicians. “I posted covers of [that song] online on YouTube when I was, like, 15 or 16 and actually never really paid attention to the lyrics, because I never really could grasp the concept of what he was reckoning with, which was the idea of God and spirit,” Mendes explains. “And at 26 after going through my own kind of relationship with that, those lyrics just felt so resonant and it just felt like the right time to [record it].”
In a candid In Conversation interview, Mendes discusses writing his new album from “a place of authenticity”, the prospect of embarking on another arena tour, and how he measures success at this point in his career.
At the gig, you spoke about ‘The Mountain’ being a very important song from your new album. What’s the story behind it?
“Maybe it’s not for everyone, but for me, I have quite an existential place I like to go to sometimes. I just had a ton of questions about a lot of different things. And I think it was really just a moment for me to tell my side of the story and to just claim myself. Usually, I don’t really care what people write about in articles and stuff, but there was a couple that I was just like, ‘This is bullshit. I need to write a song just to kind of…’
“It was empowering for me because the end line of every [musical] phrase is, like, ‘So call it what you want. You can say that I’m this and say that I’m that, but I know what I am.’ And that was an empowering phrase for me to get to.”
On the song’s final pre-chorus, you sing: “You can say I’m too young / You can say I’m too old / You can say I like girls or boys / Whatеver fits your mould.” Was it empowering to sing those words in what feels like quite a playful, nonchalant way?
“Exactly, exactly. There’s so much pressure on us to know everything, and us to be so clear on everything. And also, I know exactly what I am, and also I have no idea. I’m figuring that out just like everyone else. So it’s just kind of a hilarious concept in general, for people to be like, ‘This is what I am.’ It’s restrictive. Then you don’t let yourself become something better than you could have ever imagined. Maybe.”
Everyone’s trying to figure themselves out in their twenties, but few of us have to do that with the glare that you have on you.
“I appreciate you saying that – I agree. And yeah, I was talking about this with a friend last night, actually. You know, the pressure of discovering yourself in the public eye can be really annoying and frustrating. Or it can be an opportunity to do it in a way that hopefully inspires other people to be OK with being confused about things.”
Do you feel you’ve found a balance between being a public and private person, or is it a constant negotiation?
“Yeah, it really depends on the day. Because I’ve gone through swings where I’ve just deleted social media and pretended that no one can see me, and that wasn’t right. And then I’ve gone through places where all I can think about is what people think [and] how they see me, and that wasn’t right [either]. So yeah, it’s a constant relationship, like anything.”
Do you feel able to put less pressure on yourself now? Because obviously you still want this album to do as well as possible.
“Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, I’m so exhausted of caring so much about things working out in a way that the world deems successful. I’m tired of that because that perception being the most important thing led me to the most depressed and exhausted I ever was in my life. And I’m not even saying this in a jaded way – I hope I don’t sound jaded.
“Honestly, I just really care about being happy, and I really care about being myself. Of course I want it to do well, of course I want people to love it, but I definitely don’t want people to love it and [for] it to do well at the sacrifice of my happiness and my sense of self. So that’s kind of where I’m at with that.”
At the gig, you spoke about feeling really lonely on stage in the past. Had you felt that way for a while, or had it gradually crept up on you?
“I think it gradually crept up. You know, I started [my career] playing in theatres with just an acoustic guitar, and things felt much more connected. And then as things got bigger and bigger, I just felt physically further from people, but also emotionally further. I felt like, ‘Oh, so I’m on this pedestal or something,’ And I don’t know why, but I felt far and distant. And John Mayer said this great thing in an interview. He said his dream is to have the stage be level with the crowd. You know, obviously the stage is never going to be [physically] level. But metaphorically, I thought that made so much sense.”
Does the idea of playing a huge arena tour again appeal to you?
“To be honest, I think there is always a side of me that wants to go and play and rip a huge show – it’d be so much energy and so fun. And I’m not going to allow my fear of the past to control the future in that sense. So if that urge starts to come back, I’m not going to fight it. So yeah, I’ll let that play out.”
What does success look like to you now?
“That’s a great question, man – it’s something I think about every day… If we talk about this interview, for instance, when I walk out of this room and go, ‘Hey, I was really just myself in that interview, I wasn’t trying to please him, I wasn’t trying to please the camera, I wasn’t trying to please anyone. I was just being honest,’ that’s an extremely successful thing. Because I think it’s tough to do that as a human.
“I don’t claim to do that all the time. I think we’re always constantly sensitive and aware of everyone, and trying to please and all that. So success for me is just like, was that authentic? And after that, did people enjoy it? And then after that, all the other things. A dream of mine would be to be completely authentic, and for it to be a Number One song, and for there to be crowds of hundreds of thousands of people. That’s the dream, and I’m gonna hold on to that.”
‘Shawn’ by Shawn Mendes is out now via Island.