If Shawn Mendes wasn’t born and raised in the Toronto suburbs, he might’ve been tank-grown in an underground lab at a major label’s behest. He’s a genial, grounded young performer with a body “somewhere between fitness model and party trick”—John Mayer’s words, not mine—and a deep passion for adult contemporary pop-rock. He takes hundreds of pictures with fans in a single sitting without batting an eye. And when you hear hit singles like “Stitches” and “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back,” it’s like you’re watching the cutest counsellor at your summer camp grab an acoustic guitar and surprise a horde of pre-teens with his heavenly pipes. Mendes’ path to upper-echelon stardom began with jaunty covers of mid-’10s hits on Vine, and his first two albums—2015’s boyish Handwritten and a more muscular 2016 follow-up, Illuminate—channeled inoffensive, mercenary songwriters working in the same vein: Mayer, Ed Sheeran, Jason Mraz. Shawn Mendes, his third and most ambitious full-length, breaks the mold by suggesting alternative paths Mendes might walk. The guitar is still the focal point of his attack, whether it’s vigorously strummed (anthemic lead single “In My Blood”) or ever-so-gently picked. But he dips a toe into modern pop with help from expert collaborators like Julia Michaels and Ryan Tedder on “Nervous” and “Particular Taste,” and he dirties up his goody-two-shoes with a handful of smoldering, grown-and-sexy dalliances. The songs in the latter category capture Mendes at his most engaging and mature; you hear them and understand why Mayer told Zane Lowe that Mendes is “John Mayer 2.0, without the weird software viruses.” Sublime single “Lost in Japan” is air-fried pop-funk, light and crispy with just a whisper of grease. It uses Mendes’ youth and fame to his advantage: It’s not hard to imagine him—rich, horny, and unoccupied—chartering a jet into Tokyo for a quick hookup and a stroll through the cherry blossoms. The bleary-eyed “Where Were You in the Morning?” works the same way. He’s old enough for someone to stay the night, but naïve enough to feel crushed when he wakes up alone. “And I thought you really felt this/When we were talking about breakfast,” he sings, sitting up in bed and scratching his head. “You made it seem like we connected/I guess I just didn’t expect this.” He can put together a winning ballad in the same style: “Why” is a bruised ode to a lover (whose identity is a hot topic among fans) that coasts on sandpapered vocal texture and a lovely, unexpected vocoder bloom. There’s a compelling young adult behind this music, someone who’s playful and libidinous without projecting any menace. It’s too bad that this depth of character is absent from the rest of Shawn Mendes. Meeting these songs head-on and digesting them is less fulfilling than sniffing out hat-tips and moves cribbed from other artists. There’s little distinguishing the gasping, conversational “Nervous” from recent Selena Gomez hits like “Hands to Myself” and “Bad Liar,” all of which were co-written by Michaels. You wouldn’t need credits to guess that “Fallin’ All in You” came from Sheeran, in part because Mendes so closely mimics his vocal style. “Because I Had You” knocks its soft, muted guitar and chorus melody from Justin Bieber’s repellent “Love Yourself,” another Sheeran product. (The highlights aren’t immune, either: I caught myself singing Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” over the chords underpinning “Why.”) This looming sense of familiarity extends past the album’s musical elements and into its writing. Shawn Mendes is populated with stock characters: the girl who’s a little too high on her own supply, the girl worth waiting forever for, the girl who got away. “Particular Taste” draws up a free spirit who answers phone calls with questions and “only dances when it’s Kanye.” (Anyone who refuses to get up for anything other than “Lift Yourself” must be truly eccentric.) Nothing about these songs belongs uniquely to Mendes, and you can imagine them being recorded by anyone: Nick Jonas, Charlie Puth, a random choice from the One Direction diaspora. These are exactly the kind of B- and C-list contemporaries on whom Mendes is supposed to have a head start. Transforming average material into compelling, distinctive pop is a tall order for any would-be star, let alone one who’s been asked to undergo all of their artistic development in a viral-fame Instant Pot and doesn’t turn 20 until August. It takes more than sheer talent and good will; you need personality and perspective, the kind of intangibles that develop with time. Mendes deserves credit for recognizing the limits of youthful exuberance and proactively broadening his approach. But Shawn Mendes leaves a key question unanswered: What makes this guy different?<doc-sep>Against all odds, the self-titled Shawn Mendes album is not only worth a listen, it’s bloody great. Sam Brooks reviews. To many, the success of Shawn Mendes can seem bizarre. He has a huge fanbase amongst teenage girls because he looks and sounds like he’d only ever say nice things to and about you. He has the gormless appeal of a boyband member, his voice is not particularly large but it is distinctive, and if you’re above a certain age you’ve probably only heard his music by accident in a shop. You’d expect him to be the guy you disapprove of taking your [insert significant female relations here] to the ball, not a pop star. And you definitely wouldn’t expect him to have one absolute killer single (‘There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back’ is a perfect blend of dance, pop and rock that we barely get anymore), a few good songs and now, a genuine stunner of a pop album. But, against all odds, the self-titled Shawn Mendes album is a stunner. I’m as shocked as you are, and I’m even more shocked that I’m totally in love with this album. Let me digress and explain, briefly: I have an oft-mocked love for women in music – to the point where at one point in my teens my music collection was 100% women with no men, and even now you’d be hard-pressed to find a male pop star I was enthusiastic about. Ed Sheeran? Never heard of him. Justin Timberlake? You mean Jessica Biel’s husband who is on SNL way too much, right? Michael Jackson? Oh, Janet Jackson’s brother. (This is an exaggeration of my lack of knowledge of and indifference to male pop stars, but not by much.) Then I came across this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71-Ay3GcjHw Look at his little stupid face! Look at his doofy hair! Look at his lady-deer brown eyes! Look at him (maybe pretending to) play the guitar! Listen to his little voice falter a bit! I want to hate him. He’s just standing there with a guitar and the fifty insane hooks that this song has! But then he walks down to the audience, the key changes, he barely strokes an A chord and I’m fully hooked in. Why do I like this? This isn’t Tori Amos! This isn’t even Amos Lee, a man who I have heard exists! Alas, a killer pop song is a killer pop song. And ‘There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back’ is an absolute killer song, one of the best of last year; you can’t deny its power. But I was sceptical about Mendes – sure, he could release one great song, anybody can do that, but could he deliver? And shit, he has. Would he go the Bieber route of leaning into Usher-style R&B? Or would he continue with his one-boy-and-his-guitar shtick that has actually served him pretty well up until this point? Turns out, it’s a little bit of both – and the split suits Mendes well. The success of the album really shouldn’t be a surprise, especially when you look at the writing and production credits. Hitmaker Teddy Geiger, who has worked with Mendes and penned/produced some of his greatest hits (the aforementioned ‘There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back’, ‘Treat You Better’, ‘Mercy’), has writing credits on most of the album. John Mayer produced a song; Joel Little produced a song; Julia Michaels co-wrote one song (which is delightfully recognisable as a Julia Michaels ditty) and duets on another; Ed Sheeran co-wrote one song; and mid-aughts hitmaker Ryan Tedder wrote two. Those are some stone-cold hitmaking names, and this is an album that didn’t come to play, it came to make a mark. It seems odd to describe an album that is this slight and gentle as killer. None of the songs kick into anything resembling uptempo, Mendes never goes above a pained croon on any of the album’s 15 songs, and you can’t imagine any of the songs filling the dancefloor, unless it’s 5 am and a sad bartender is feeling pretty introspective cleaning the bar up by himself. (In saying that, the Khalid duet – ‘Youth’ – is ripe for a radio-friendly club remix. Have that idea for free, club remixers!) Even among the gentleness, there’s enough variety to keep these 14 songs from feeling samey. There’s the brilliant Julia Michaels duet ‘Like to Be You’, which lets both singers showcase a shaky, shy vulnerability, the kind which we rarely get in mainstream pop and also features the no-scope headshot couplet “I don’t know what it’s like to be you/I don’t know what it’s like but I’m dying to”. And on the opposite side of things, there’s the tipsy come-hither ditty ‘Lost in Japan’, where Mendes for the first time sounds like an of-age, semi-mature human being and it suits him. It suits him really well, you guys. None of the songs are as arena-filling as ‘There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back’ (do you get that I really like this song? I really like this song! ), but they’re full of hooks and they stick in your brain, and none of them overstays their welcome. Not a single song is over four minutes long, and several are even under two minutes – they come, they dive into your brain immediately and rest there. The best example is ‘Because I Had You’, one of the Tedder co-writes – a quick rabbit punch of a song, with a chorus that turns the very locked-and-stickered diary rhymes of new/too/do/you into something immediate and nearly profound – but each song has at least one flourish that makes it special. Like all the best pop stars who don’t have particularly huge voices that have come before him, Mendes plays beautifully to the limits of his voice. His thin rasp gives everything he sings a pained and raw-throated emotion; it’s an effect that he deploys well – like Britney’s croak, it’s immediately recognisable once you hear it. When there are so many chefs in the mix, a distinctive voice is a huge asset, and it’s the best tool that Mendes has to deploy. I shouldn’t like this music, it falls so far outside my demographic that it makes me worry that something’s been permanently adjusted in my brain. And a lot of the songs fall into the Sheeran trap of blaming a girl for all a man’s problems. But Shawn Mendes makes the best case thus far (except… you know what song I’m going to mention, so let’s not) for Mendes as a significant popstar with staying power. He combines the best parts of early Bieber with the more appealing parts of Ed Sheeran, and has one of the most strategically varied songwriting and production armies of anybody in pop music. He’s not going anywhere, and this album makes me glad of that – more music like this is only ever going to be a good thing. Plus, look at his dumb stupid beautiful confusing face! The Spinoff’s music content is brought to you by our friends at Spark. Listen to all the music you love on Spotify Premium, it’s free on all Spark’s Pay Monthly Mobile plans. Sign up and start listening today.<doc-sep>Since Shawn Mendes emerged in 2014 as one of the first-ever “Vine stars” (it’s hard to believe how quaint a term involving defunct social-media app can sound), he’s evolved with a self-assurance that belies his youth, his indisputable cuteness and the seemingly inevitable fizz that would come with such an arrival. He’s deftly avoided many of the pitfalls of both novelty status and teen stardom — partially because, unlike many teen stars, he didn’t arrive on the coattails of a television show or film that diluted his identity — and, thanks to a live show strong enough to sell out Madison Square Garden and well-crafted pop songs like the punctuationally inconsistent “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back” and his biggest hit “Stitches,” he’s developed an impressively sturdy career and a fanatical following, albeit one mostly consisting of teenaged girls. Now 19, the singer is preparing for the next, arguably most difficult transition, one that’s felled many before him: The move from teen star to career artist. His new album — which signals this transition by being self-titled, even though it’s his third full-length — both doubles down on the breathy acoustic pop that got him where he is and finds him branching into into several risky but generally satisfying directions. While the opening track, “In My Blood,” features a soaring rock chorus in obvious homage to Kings of Leon’s 2007 hit “Sex on Fire,” Mendes’ two role models here are others who made a similar leap: Justins Timberlake and Bieber. The former looms over tight, lite-R&B tracks like “Nervous” and “Lost in Japan” and especially Mendes’ phrasing and white-soul vocals that often flip into falsetto; the latter in the several wistful tracks here that evoke Bieber’s comeback hit, the Ed Sheeran-assisted “Love Yourself.” Yet the references are less derivative than knowing winks and signposts that signal Mendes’ intended path. The singer and his team are savvy enough to know that his transition requires top-shelf co-signs, and the album is stuffed with them. Friend/mentor Sheeran co-wrote one song; John Mayer produced and plays an atmospheric guitar solo on another; OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder brings an oddly Robin Thicke-ish flavor to “Particular Taste,” which it opens with the unintentionally loaded line, “She don’t listen to a thing unless it feels right / Only dances when it’s Kanye.” Mendes also teams up with BFF Khalid — another fast-rising star born in 1998 — for the duet “Youth,” which the duo performed as a pro-gun control statement at the Billboard Awards the other night. The song features defiantly positive lines like “You can’t take my youth away … I won’t let it turn into hate, I won’t let it change me.” Yet the most prominent collaborator is Julia Michaels, who adds her unmistakable touch to two of the album’s key songs: “Nervous” (which evokes “Bad Liar,” her hit for Selena Gomez) and especially “Like to Be You,” a duet that marks one of her best vocal performances to date. The album closes with “When You’re Ready,” a soft, heartstring-tugging ballad with a mellifluous, multisyllabic melody and some well-played lyrical details (“What if my dad is right when he says you’re the one?”) and a chorus that unflinchingly pledges eternal love: “Baby, anytime you’re ready, I’m waiting/ Even ten years from now, if you haven’t found somebody, I promise I’ll be around.” The song ends unexpectedly, on a lingering note that leaves the listener anticipating more — a clever songwriting flourish that makes the song resonate even more than it did already, and plays to his teen base on an album that’s also moving him away from it. “Shawn Mendes” is a remarkably well-crafted pop album that finds the singer trying on different styles, prominently showcasing his collaborators and making some flagrant references — yet his persona has become strong enough that he’s never overpowered by any of it. The songs are short and to the point and rarely outstay their welcome, and while it probably would have been a stronger record with 12 tracks instead of 14, it’s a confident step forward that could very well usher in a new and bigger phase of a career that’s already bigger than anyone could have expected four short years ago. Shawn Mendes “Shawn Mendes” (Island Records)<doc-sep>
On his self-titled third album, Shawn Mendes expands and matures his sound on singles In My Blood and Nervous. Here’s our track-by-track review. There comes a time in every young artist’s career when they have to make the conscious transition into their “adult” career. They want to be taken seriously. They want their music to reflect who they really are. They don’t want to be pegged as the teen idol anymore. With the release of Shawn Mendes, the self-titled third album from the “Stitches” hitmaker, it’s safe to say that the adult contemporary novice will be taken seriously with music that reflects who he’s become outside of his teen idol image. From the vulnerable lead single “In My Blood” to the sensuality of rhythmic cuts like “Where Were You In the Morning?,” the new album from Shawn Mendes sheds the safe skin of “Stitches” and “Treat You Better.” He’s growing up not only in age but in musical evolution, leaving behind his safety nets and branching out. On his latest release, Mendes shows off both his maturity and staying power as a pop force, and we’re breaking down the album track by track. 1. “In My Blood” The first single from the set, “In My Blood” previewed Mendes’ maturation from “Stitches” to that all-too-familiar period between 18 and your 20s. We haven’t quite heard the pop heartthrob lay his honesty out there this matter-of-factly, and paired with a Kings of Leon-esque arena rock sound, the urgency will have you feeling the feels, too. 2. “Nervous” While switching gears from the somber “In My Blood” right into the lightness of “Nervous” incites something of a whiplash, the infectiously upbeat pop groove might be the best song on the album. The magic touch of co-writer Julia Michaels is especially apparent on the mumble-adjacent verses, but that’s no complaint. “Nervous” could have been in a 2000s movie montage, and that’s the highest compliment imaginable. 3. “Lost In Japan” “Lost In Japan” was released alongside “In My Blood” as another taste of Mendes’ new flavor. Aside from a couple tracks on 2016’s Illuminate (“No Promises” and “Lights On”), “sensual” and “sultry” haven’t been appropriate adjectives to assign to a Shawn Mendes song. But the pulsing track tinged with notes of R&B and funk earns those mature descriptions. 4. “Where Were You In the Morning?” Mendes has been vocal about his idolization of John Mayer, and the two have even struck up a friendship in the past year. He sounds the most like Mayer on “Where Were You In the Morning?” than he ever has. As he wonders what happened to a lover the morning after, the bluesy song finds Mendes testing out an aces falsetto sure to set millions of hearts aflutter. 5. “Like To Be You” (feat. Julia Michaels) Julia Michaels returns to lend both her writing prowess and her unmistakable vocals to the John Mayer-produced ballad “Like To Be You.” The duo represent two sides of the same argument over Mayer’s spare production, complete with his signature electric guitar purring in the background. Free of the bells and whistles, it’s an effecting duet that could have lasted far beyond its 2:39 runtime. 6. “Fallin’ All In You” “Fallin’ All In You” is destined to be a fan-favorite for a number of reasons. Namely, it’s the requisite sugar-sweet love song all singers have at least one of in their catalogue. Also, it was co-written by Ed Sheeran, and the trained ear can detect his melodies in the verses, so much so that it barely sounds like a Shawn Mendes song. It’s almost difficult not to hear Mendes sing “It was only meant to be for one night” without a British accent in the second verse. 7. “Particular Taste” Another track noteworthy for its spare use of pop production (producer Ryan Tedder showing restraint, for once), “Particular Taste” turns the temperature way up. If “Lost In Japan” started the vibe, “Particular Taste” sets the mood with musings about a romantic obsession. It’s reminiscent of Janelle Monae’s underrated bop “Make Me Feel,” and the song, once again, could have stretched the indisputable catchiness out for another minute. 8. “Why” The major takeaway from Shawn Mendes is that Mendes learned how to sing in falsetto, and he’s not turning back.