When I first discovered Shawn Mendes in my freshman year of high school, he was the king of pop. The dark-haired dreamy boy wonder of teenage, youthful guitar riffs and innocently-in-love lyricism. His songs exuded a sense of 15-year-old familiarity, the ephemeral giddiness of the mistakes, mishaps, and joys of adolescence. Mendes became my pop idol rock as I felt his lyrics speak to me and helped separate the sincerity and stupidity out of my youthful awkwardness. It allowed me to embrace the imperfections of teenage actions and events.
As more songs came and went, he never wavered in his ability to create music that solidified the thrilling nature of mirligoes in idolatry, music whose chords and courses ebbed in relatability, but never flowed, never losing the level of knowing the soul and heart of an experience only possibly captured musically.
After many albums and songs speaking of insecurities, vulnerabilities, youthful loves, and seductive lovers, Mendes has finally released a new album! His newest album is self-titled, Shawn, and it immediately surprised me with the very stripped-away nature apparent in its aesthetic. The cover is a simple black-and-white photo of him, only capturing the subtle shadows of his face, the messiness of his scruff, and the tiredness and surprisingly comforting weakness in his eyes. It immediately focuses on highlighting and elevating the human, rather than the pop-star archetype he once singularly embodied. Shirtless in front of a barren, unidentifiable background, Mendes is vulnerable and imperfect, silent in defense of his imperfect state.
When I first observed the cover, I felt both surprised and enthused, for the defining image was one that severed Mendes’ ties with the boy wonder that caused palpitations in plethoras of teenage girls. No longer was the primary image one of a suaveness, of a commercially innocent attractiveness, an offspring aesthetic of the Bieber Fever movement. Mendes was here, barren, purposefully unmarked by marketing, existing as a human being rather than idol. The expectations thrust upon him, were now thrust off with the implementation of this solitary and naturalistic album cover. Immediately, I was excited to listen, for if his album cover spoke to a fascinating change in his presentation and a certain awareness to the perception of his image, I was enthralled by the idea of what this new album would sound like. I was truly not disappointed.
“Who I am”
Thrust into the reverb of acoustic vulnerability, Mendes softly and melodically apologizes to a greater “you” that he has let down. Yet, it is an ironic apology, as he is justifying exactly why he must let others down—for the greater good of himself. Many could view the song as a melancholic melody, but I perceived it quite the opposite. As, rather, a justification for politely letting others down in order to build one’s self up.
Yet, Mendes manages to dip into the sadness he feels for letting others down, all the while building up to an emotion of self-empowerment, managing to hold onto his mission of being okay with letting others down to find himself. Also tucked away in this song, is that it’s okay to not know who you are anymore, whilst also finding great potential in figuring out just what that confusing ambiguity hides. This song tugged at my heartstrings, an immediately relatable tune for the confused collegiate, or anyone confused at any age. It made me feel okay to not know every part of myself in the midst of the unknown is a great privilege that I felt granted in this song.
“Why, Why, Why”
An upbeat, folky tune perfect for a late night at an outdoor festival, the lyrics hide a much more serious meaning than the music itself simply projects. In this song, Mendes reflects on the merry-go-round-like sensation of searching for a logical answer, to the simple, but incredibly emotionally ambiguously perplexing events in one’s life. Even though many events appear simple enough in logic and its occurrence, sometimes for our emotional intelligence we continue to maddeningly search for an answer to something personal that still feels insecure.
Mendes reflects on many events including a pregnancy scare, touring, haunting visions of a past partner, and ultimately, the vulnerability we still feel as we attempt to navigate the frustrating landscape of logic that seems to shift and stabilize in a myriad of maddening ways. As I listened to this song, I felt a familiar sense of the touch and presence of logic’s clever ways that cause annoyance. I reflected upon my own experiences, questioning the simplest acts and events, the loves I’ve lost, and choices I made or ones I will inevitably forgo. I also reflected on the manner in which I searched for logic when logic was, perhaps, not the most necessary of counterparts, or answers during that time. The upbeat quality of the music made me want to dance around and around in a circle and perhaps that was his intent with this song. Our desire to dance around and around, searching for an answer is instinctual, something that is inborn—no matter how much we want to avoid drama and hardship, we will always travel in circles when we desperately want to be gifted something from questioning.
“That’s The Dream”
Something is both here and there, in our hands and out of reach. In this song, Mendes contemplates the implications of questioning the very nature of an intimate relationship. There is a sense of fragility, and precarity that dares the listener not to believe as if that is to breathe, as if the relationship will immediately collapse, break, or sever. The soft melody of this song lends a sense of hope drenched in nostalgia, a slow kind of sadness rooted in an irreplaceable joy in the past. The hope that festers throughout this song is not depressing nor is it particularly telling of a positive future, but rather is melancholy in its state of appearing to be a hope, once beautiful and pure in the power of its belief, but now is not what it once was. The listener is forced to reconcile with the endurance of desires we thought destroyed. This song brought me back to my first love, to a time in which my definition of forever came before a present was solidified. I experienced so much emotion and love, but also so much incredible precarity in my youthful love, a precarity so beautifully documented in Mendes’ lyrics.
“Nobody Knows”
In this song, Mendes masterfully captures the experience and the emotional sensation of experiencing a lack of satiation in relationships. We often are all too expectant to be completely filled by specific relationships and connections, situating ourselves only to be completed by the sources we pray will be the answer to the empty recesses of our most vulnerable internal locations. Yet, as Mendes reflects, when everything feels like it should, where does the love go, and, truly, nobody really does know. We spend so much time desiring outward sources to fill what needs to be extensively healed by ourselves. Articulated with an authentic sense of being unaware, Mendes expresses that sentiment with a vulnerability that feels like folk rock bottom.
“Isn’t That Enough”
To hold onto what is there and to feel that fill oneself up is what Mendes poetically communicates in this song. A perfect follow-up to “Nobody Knows”, Mendes contemplates and elevates the infinitesimal, often overlooked, ambiguous details of the present over the larger moments and circumstances we typically center as our focal point of a perfection to heal us and make us hole. By focusing on the minuscule details, Mendes highlights why the distinctly definitive moments’ supposed perfect found in the present moment is not enough to make one feel complete. This song triggered an internal philosophical reckoning for myself, as I often feel that I am all too easily swayed by ignoring the grave work necessary to heal, and rather make me attempt to forage a sustained satiation with the most precarious and unstable of outward sources. Mendes’ song penetrates the potential of the present moment, calling into question why satiation and a state of completeness cannot be foraged by what we have and experience in the now, rather than finding a source to sustain in the future or other timeline variations. It is that a quintessential state of self totality arises from a rootedness that stagnates us profoundly and gladly in the present and all its infinitely definite.
“Heart of Gold”
My favorite song off the album combines abstract, glowing imagery to create a sense of nostalgia surrounding who someone once was. By using the metaphor of a heart of gold, the song is centered around who someone once was and who they still could be because of the pureness of the potentiality within the very center, the heart, of the individual themself. An incredibly relatable song, “Heart of Gold” makes the listener consider the moments in life when they have validated their own justifications of individuals by remaining an unrelenting friend and believer, by investing in a person’s center, heart. We often believe that good intentions may not surface, but remain intact, in a state of potential and tangible manifestation. Perhaps they may simply not know how to translate out of the internal body.
Do we do this to hide from the pain of what it means when there is nothing there, something broken, in the ones that we most love, or is it beautifully idealistic to believe in the singular heart rather than the external forces of an individual? These are all questions raised by Mendes’ profound lyrics in this song. It’s hard to be forced to consider that what lies inside is different than who we have always known. Perhaps holding onto the hope of the heart provides space between ourselves and the reality of the unknown hidden within someone we felt we have known.
“Heavy”
An intimate window into the hardship of emotional processes, this song explores the difficulty of confronting one’s emotions, while also acknowledging the latent potentiality of support that exists within the relationships in our lives. Mendes’ lyrics express the universal tension between vulnerability and reservation, opening up and closing down. Yet, if we trust the individuals in the relationships enough by leaning into them, we can gain confidence and walk into the light. For me, this song spoke perfectly to acting on our vulnerability, which is much more than simply acknowledging it. We all struggle to act vulnerably for fear that it brings about the worst, rather than considering it bringing about far more beauty than we ever could have imagined. Mendes captures this experience in such honesty that it nearly brought tears to my eyes.
“That’ll Be The Day”
Pouring out emotion for the figure that has passed, but will always remain more than the ones who are here with us in the present, is a universal experience expressed with exponentiality of desire for someone old in this song. Grandiose ideas of what could have happened, holes that remain in a new partnership, and a familiar sense of yearning for a past relationship all form to curate a perfect picture of reminiscence that is as painful as it is full of desire. Mendes pontificates on the affliction of conflicting targets of desire—one in the now, but also of the one who came before who will always remain. This song pulled at the very strings of my soul, for the comparison of desire and yearning for a love that slipped away is a pain and a spiral of thoughts that haunt me every day. I always look forward to the next great love of my life, but somehow, I always settle back at one. It is near impossible for me to kiss another man without thinking of the memory of him and Mendes’ song intimately illustrated the dangerous lingering of a love, a love written in black ink that you cannot erase from corners of your heart and your mind.
“In Between”-
This song is a beautiful meditation on the small moments that lay in between the larger definitives in life. Instead of focusing on defining things, the large moments that are unmistakably definitive in their purpose or meaning, why not as Mendes’ croon urges, focus on considering and reflecting on the in-betweens? What would happen if we forgoed imprinting gravity on the immense, and instead repurposed gravity to being imprinted onto the small. The simplistic, yet poetic lyrics inspire a thoughtful reconciliation of the moments we endow with value and the moments that explode the notion of the finite and offer more value. This is a song that forces us to swap adolescent values with adult notions, evolving past the sentiments that force us into mental stagnation, rather than liberation. As Mendes sings, a repurposing of appreciating collides with contentment, a vocal example of the potentiality hidden within the process that the lyrics allude to. Overall, this song makes my heart feel pride, happiness, and a consistent sensation of consideration.
“The Mountain”
The most experimental of the songs on this album, “The Mountain” explores transformation as an experience by submerging oneself in contradicting environments, and thus, contradicting mindsets. Jolted out of the city, Mendes reflects on the liberation of nature and the allowance it gave him to slow down, liberate, and move out of stagnation. This song is also experimental in lyrics, as the sense of intangibility in the poeticism allows a variety of angles to be added to the experience of interpretation. The lyrics resemble an inundation of outward sources one can perhaps blame for one’s shift or changes, yet when it comes down to it, Mendes has, by going into nature and reflected, changed from the impact of a multitude of sources. Sometimes, as the song suggests, a bit of distance is needed, if only to realize how we have changed and how only to morph for the better again. As someone who lives in a generation where change is a normal activity, shape-shifting for protection and attention, the song’s message of reflecting on the act of changing is more than a meditation—it’s a way to slow down the very act that speeds our life up only to destroy the beauty of slowness.
“Rollin’ Right Along-”
Immediately, the title grasps at the very sensation of repetitive, mindless movement. The repetition of the title throughout the song reminds us of the mundanity with which we constantly move through our lives, a repetition that is an artistic representation of second nature. Yet, in the seeming mundanity of moving through life, we may lose fragments that we should hold onto. We travel past moments that hurt, moments we avoided, and moments we wish we could get back. Yet, the repetition reminds us that we are not the only one who experiences this, and it is a constant cycle of reminiscent wishful thinking. We, like Mendes, always wish we could take back time, and make an old love ours again, yet, we wish we could hold onto those choices to perhaps choose differently or help ourselves grow.
Overall, Shawn is a remarkable album, full of maturity and vulnerability that strips Mendes of a boyish pop culture image, replacing it with a humanity that transforms him into an artist rather than traps him in the realm of boy wonder. I truly hope that those of you who were apprehensive about indulging in someone who resembled a Bieber Boy will take a chance on this album. It illustrates not only Mendes’ versatility but also his relatable vulnerability, a reason why everyone should wake up to the new dawn and listen.