And then Shawn Mendes ended up in the vortex

“I don’t understand who I am right now,” Shawn Mendes despairs in “Who I am”, the song that opens his new album “Shawn”. It was one of the first that the Canadian singer-songwriter wrote and composed once he emerged from the tunnel from which he launched an SOS in 2022, when on the eve of his world tour he suddenly announced on social media that he had to stop. Before that wake-up call there had been no inkling that anything had stopped working in the career – and life – of the pop star. 200 million copies sold including records and hits such as “There’s nothing holdin’ me back”, “Treat you better” and “Señorita”. Far from it: “Wonder”, released two years earlier, had consolidated Mendes’ success, catapulting him back to the top of the sales charts and allowing him to program

an 80-date tour with earnings estimated at $100 millionpulverized by that shock announcement. “I realized that I need to heal and take care of myself and my mental health, before anything else,” the singer-songwriter admitted on social media. It is precisely his exit from the vortex of depression that Shawn Mendes sings today, two years later, in “Who I am” and the other eleven songs contained in “Shawn”, a record that he imagined as a sort of diary in which he jotted down the thoughts, reflections and dreams he had in these twenty-four monthsto find himself. And letting yourself go, in the end, in a liberating version of that “Hallelujah” written by Leonard Cohen and made famous by Jeff Buckley.

He was looking for some purityShawn Mendes. It was the only right key to describe this phase of his career, far from the gigantism to which he had accustomed fans with pop anthems such as “Treat you better” or “There’s nothing holdin’ me back”. He found that purity, working with producers such as Scott Harris, Mike Sabath, Nate Mercereau and Eddie Benjamin, among his closest collaborators, in the folk of the 60s and 70s: “Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash and a lot of John Denver“, he said in a long interview with the New York Times, among the few granted on the eve of the release of “Shawn”, speaking about the album’s influences.

At 26, Shawn Mendes sings about his maturity, he who .he was only 15 years old when, thanks to the videos published on Vine – the app considered the ancestor of TikTok – he became a star and found himself in a handful of years recording four unreleased albums, two live albums, publishing twenty singles and as many video clips, before the inevitable psychological collapse. “When I came off stage, I simply didn’t recognize myself. I was seriously depressed,” he says, breaking the long silence in which he was holed up after the announcement of the stop. Written and recorded over the course of two years, the project took place in several locations, including Bear Creek Studio in Washington State (where they recorded Soundgarden, Foo Fighters, James Brown), Nashville’s Darkhorse Recordings (where they Dolly Parton, Keith Urban, Jeff Beck and Neil Diamond) and the Electric Lady of New York (the Big Apple studios founded in 1970 by Jimi Hendrix, which hosted sessions by the Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Led Zeppelin and The Clash).

The album was preceded by the singles “Why why why” And “Isn’t that enough“, which in August officially marked Shawn Mendes’ return to the stage: “I stepped off the stage with nothin’ left / all the lights were fuckin’ with my head / but here I am, singin’ songs again”, “I walked off stage with nothing left / all the lights were going to my head / but here I am, singing again,” he sings on “Why why why.” The two singles were followed in September by “Nobody Knows”, a broken-hearted ballad about drained bottles. The “boy with a heart of gold” of the title of the album – and of the song of the same name – is a friend “who flew away too soon, out of his control”: “I said to myself: I won’t write that story that has been written a thousand times by musicians and artists who can’t resist and start taking more and more drugs, more and more alcohol, until they abuse it. I won’t do it”.

Music has been his medicine: “Two years ago I felt like I had absolutely no idea who I was. A year ago I couldn’t enter a studio without falling into total panic. So, being here now with 12 beautiful songs finished feels like a gift. I honestly thank God for my friends and family.” The ending of this story is happyfortunately. Because – he says – “life can be brutal, but having a small group of people you deeply trust accompanying you on this journey makes it so much better. I really hope you like this album. I really hope so. I hope it makes you feel as warm and down to earth as it does me”.