Shawn Mendes takes care of his chaos
A VERSION of this story appears in the June 1 issue of Entertainment Weekly. Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW. You’ll never get Shawn Mendes’s journal, but you’ll get the closest thing to it: his eclectic third album, self-titled to reflect the 19-yearold’s attempt at stamping his anxious, confident, chaotic self at this moment in time… before he forgets it and everything changes again. “Every album is going to become more honest and truthful, but I really wanted to capture this,” the singer-songwriter tells EW before the May 25 release of Shawn Mendes, the follow-up to his two platinum 2015 and 2016 records from which the breakout singles “Stitches,” “Treat You Better,” and “Mercy” were born. “I don’t know how to describe it,” he continues, “but there’s something about where I am right now in my life, being 19 and I think the most malleable I’ve ever been, and maybe ever will be. I feel like I’m going through a huge transition and everything is just crazy and exciting.”
Mendes recognizes that imprinting this moment with a self-titled release (you only get one!) means branding both the high and low points of a stillnascent career — one which, for all its success, is just four years removed from when he signed with Island Records after acquiring millions of fans on the video app Vine. These four years, he says, have landed him in “a state of incredible mayhem, in the best way,” one marked by viral songs, highprofile fans and collaborators (Taylor Swift and John Mayer among them), and tabloid devotion to his personal life. But it also came with the less desired symptoms that accompany fame in the on-demand age, compounded especially for artists whose ages still end with “teen.”
In a time when anxiety has captured the nation, Mendes joins a rising number of young celebrities who have recently incorporated the messy truth about their mental health into their art. “Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in,” he sings on the album’s inaugural single “In My Blood.” In another single, “Youth,” he issues a clarion call to the hopeless to resist the urge to despair; it’s a song open for wide interpretation, but Mendes all but confirmed its link to America’s home-grown identity crisis by employing it as an anthem against gun violence at the May 20 Billboard Music Awards.
It’s easy for artists to say they want to be open — every lyric is their most candid ever, every album their most personal one yet — but the tendency of musicians to shed their selfcensoring and activate a new truthfulness in songwriting is an evolution that only comes with the hindsight of a long career. Mendes’ awakening, arriving early, is no less valid. He recognizes just how fast and furious the rites of passage can come in a pop career. His third album is his attempt at capturing that evolution in its tracks.