Shawn Mendes- Shawn
Label: Island
Producers: Shawn Mendes, Mike Sabath, Nate Mercereau, and Ethan Gruska
From the outset of his career, Shawn Mendes has always stood out from the pop music pack. He quickly established himself as a teenage pop act who possessed the kind of artistic narrative and heart not typically associated with one who followed Justin Bieber’s once-revolutionary path of the 2010s viral breakthrough. Even as his chart popularity peaked toward the end of the decade, he was doing so by balancing his catchiest numbers with powerful revelations like “In My Blood”, an impressively mature ballad that addressed his own mental health battles head-on, and has since been solidified as his signature song. Mendes’ personal battles have only intensified in the four years since his last studio effort (2020’s Wonder), a period rife with high-profile romantic tribulations, endless media speculation about his sexuality, and a cancelled world tour. True to form, he never shied away from discussing his internal battles or need for self-care during this troubled time. And it all leads to this, his long-awaited fifth studio set. But rather than being positioned as some box-office comeback squarely aiming for a reclamation of the budding superstar status that got cut off at the knees, Shawn finds Mendes fully embracing the headiness of the past few years. The sound of the album finds the artist fully evolved into a folk-pop singer, with a sparse and organic sound that feels like the most confessional moments of Ed Sheeran’s catalog filtered through a darker and less polished Lumineers-esque filter. And it works in remarkably beautiful fashion. Powerfully intimate moments like lead single “Why, Why, Why”, “Isn’t That Enough”, “Heart of Gold”, “That’ll Be the Day”, and “The Mountain” (where he even references those obnoxiously persistent rumors) are without question his most passionate and fully-formed compositions, and these songs as well as Mendes’ singing positively thrive in these more stripped musical settings. The emotional trajectory of the album swells gorgeously, before reaching its final moment and sole outside composition with a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. The song itself has of course experienced a stunning life cycle, evolving from under-appreciated gem to dark-horse standard to one of those songs that now gets covered too frequently. With all of that said, Mendes’ rendering is a worthy entry in the song’s canon, and proves to be the perfect emotional swan song to an excellent album, far and way Shawn’s best to date. This will not be the album that restores Shawn Mendes as an up-and-coming pop megastar. Instead, it serves as the full-bodied artistic realization of a young and important singer-songwriter, and hopefully the new launching point for a long and soulfully enriching career. And folks, while that latter result may be technically less lucrative, it’s a far better outcome for a voice as rich and promising as Shawn Mendes.
Track Listing:
- “Who I Am” (Shawn Mendes, Scott Harris, Nate Mercereau, Jonah Shy)
- “Why, Why, Why” (Mendes, Mike Sabath, Eddie Benjamin, Harris)
- “That’s the Dream” (Mendes, Sabath, Benjamin, Harris)
- “Nobody Knows” (Mendes, Sabath, Benjamin, Harris)
- “Isn’t That Enough” (Mendes, Sabath, Mercereau, Harris, Ethan Gruska, Amy Allen)
- “Heart of Gold” (Mendes, Sabath, Benjamin, Harris)
- “Heavy” (Mendes, Sabath, Mercereau, Harris)
- “That’ll Be the Day” (Mendes, Sabath, Harris, Benjamin, Chris Thile)
- “In Between” (Mendes, Gruska, Allen)
- “The Mountain” (Mendes, Mercereau, Harris)
- “Rollin’ Right Along” (Mendes, Sabath, Benjamin, Harris)
- “Hallelujah” (Leonard Cohen)
The 706 