Last month, Shawn Mendes directly addressed the ongoing speculation surrounding his sexuality, with the 26-year-old star being faced with rumors that he is secretly gay since he kick started his career more than 10 years ago.
Shawn previously admitted that the constant discussion around his sexuality upset him, telling Rolling Stone in 2018: “I’d like to say I don’t care about it, but that’s not true. In the back of my heart, I feel like I need to go be seen with someone — like a girl — in public to prove to people that I’m not gay.”
But in his new song “The Mountain,” Shawn says that he is no longer bothered by what people have to say about him.
In the song, which he debuted last month, Shawn sings: “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 / But I've never been better / So call it what you want.”
He opened up a little more during his concert on Oct. 28.
“The truth is that I didn’t get to do a lot of 15-year-old things and discover parts of myself that you do at 15,” he then said, per the Independent. “There’s this thing about my sexuality, and people have been talking about it for so long.”
Shawn added that the speculation is “kind of silly,” and told fans: “I think sexuality is such a beautifully complex thing, and it’s so hard to just put into boxes.”
“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 it,” he went on.
“The real truth about my life and my sexuality is that, man, I’m just figuring it out like everyone. And it feels really scary because we live in a society that has a lot to say about that,” Shawn concluded. “And 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.”
And in a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Shawn has reacted to the response to his comments — with some accusing him of only mentioning his sexuality as a publicity stunt for his new album, Shawn, released today.
Discussing “The Mountain” with Zane, Shawn said that he wrote it after spending “a lot of years” being “hurt” and “confused” by the way that people perceived him.
“Humans, we’re pretty fragile,” he explained. “When you have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people projecting their opinion of who they think you are and why they think you’re that onto you… The human brain is fragile.”
“I’ve had times where I’ve been reading what people think about me, and it’s gotten to the point where I’m like: ‘Maybe that’s true,’” Shawn added. “It’s sad because I think about little Shawn, like, 15, 16-year-old Shawn, who is just trying to do his best job and has no idea.”
“No one told him: ‘Hey, dude, you’re in for one because having hundreds of thousands of people daily tell you what they think about you is going to be really intense on the psyche, it’s going to mess you up a little bit,'” he shared.
Zane then mentioned the fact that Shawn addresses the conversation around his sexuality in his song, and told the star that he had defended him to people who criticized his choice to speak out.
Zane said to Shawn: “I really weighed in — I got pissed off that people go to you for so many years, you finally came to some conclusion through your art, [and] directly to your fans, from the stage, decided to just speak your truth in that moment, how it related to you. And people accused you of using it for promotional purposes.”
“I said: ‘The guy hasn’t promoted anything for four-and-a-half fucking years,’” Zane went on. “‘The guy literally played the “No Attention” game for four-and-a-half fucking years, and now you’re accusing him of trying to sell records, are you kidding?!’”
And Shawn agreed with this sentiment, acknowledging the lose-lose situation that he is in.
“If you’re not saying anything, you’re hiding,” he said. “And if you’re saying something, you’re promoting it. It’s crazy, isn't it?”
