Over the last few months, Shawn Mendes’s past relationships with Sabrina Carpenter and Camila Cabello have been a hot topic of conversation. Now, he’s speaking out on his personal life, namely his sexuality. During his For Friends and Family Only concert in Colorado on Oct. 28, Mendes directly acknowledged his sexuality after much speculation around this has come up since he started performing his upcoming song “The Mountain” while on tour.
The track includes the lyrics, “Some days, I have a change of heart / You can say what you need to say/ You can say I’m too young / You can say I’m too old / You can say I like girls or boys / Whatever fits your mold.”
During his concert on Oct. 28, Mendes spoke out for the first time on this conversation. “Since I was really young, there’s been this thing about my sexuality, and people have been talking about it for so long,” he told the crowd, per a fan clip posted to TikTok. “I think it’s kind of silly, because I think sexuality is such a beautifully complex thing, and it’s so hard to just put into boxes.”
He continued, “It always felt like such an intrusion on something very personal to me, something that I was figuring out in myself, something that I had yet to discover, and still have yet to discover.” The “Stitches” singer said that writing “The Mountain” felt very important as it allowed him to address his sexuality in a “way that felt close to my heart” and “speaking freely now” so that he can be “closer to everyone.”
Mendes added, “The real truth about my life and my sexuality is that, man, I’m just figuring it out like everyone. I don’t really know sometimes, and I know other times. 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.”
Later on in the show, Mendes talked about finding “the one” and the pressures that come along with that.
“When you’re single, there’s this pressure of looking for ‘The One,’ who’s ‘The One?’… Damn, that’s a lot of pressure to put on someone when you first start dating,” he said. “For me, I’ve just been trying to take that pressure off of whoever, and just allow myself to experience the love that is happening in that moment, wherever and however that’s happening. Man, we all need a little bit of cuddling, a little bit of hugging.”
I think we can all collectively agree that Mendes deserves a great big hug after this!