Shawn Mendes’ 3rd album benefits from knack for pop hooks, soulful singing
Mendes has a song about anxiety.
If Charlie Puth has enviable singing skills fueling his catchy songs, Shawn Mendes has his fragile soul backing up his continually evolving musicality. This much is obvious in the latter’s eponymously titled third album “Shawn Mendes,” which sees the 19-year-old singer-songwriter getting handy with a funkier sound and themes that evince growth and a maturing social conscience.
Yes, “grownup” subject matter—like anxiety and depression (“In My Blood”) and violence (“Youth,” his collaboration with the similarly gifted Khalid). The 14-track collection was released in full last Friday and is expected to top the Billboard 200 chart like his first two albums.
While sticking to his acoustic roots, “In My Blood” is a matter-of-fact disclosure more than a cry for help. The lyrics can’t get any clearer than this: “Laying on the bathroom floor, feeling nothing/ Keep telling me that it gets better/ Does it ever?/ Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in/ Sometimes, I feel like giving up/ No medicine strong enough/ I’m crawling in my skin.”
“It’s not all down, but it is something that hit me last year,” Shawn reveals. “I was a pretty calm kid growing up. I knew people who suffered from anxiety, but I found it hard to understand until it hit me.”
Written in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom last year, the wistful “Youth” tells young people like him not to let the blows of the evils of the world crush their optimism and soul.
Mendes’ self-titled album
Even when Shawn dishes about his personal experiences, written out of anger (“Queen,” about a self-entitled woman who makes “beautiful look ugly”), uncertainty (“Why”) or regret (the exceptional “Because I Had You”), you can’t find fault with his unwavering commitment to emotional honesty and clarity.
The tracks with his talented “partners in crime” are as notable for their radio-friendly arrangements as they are for the intimate issues they tackle—about finding love on the rebound (“Fallin’ All in You,” cowritten with Ed Sheeran), petty quarrels (with Julia Michaels) and his exasperating relationship with a finicky, hard-to-please woman who’s “obsessed with the chase” (the delectably punchy “Particular Taste,” with OneRepublic’s lead vocalist Ryan Tedder).
The aforementioned songs are catchy collaborations that could stand on their own musical merits. But, the lure is even more potent when Shawn goes at it alone: We couldn’t get enough of the way the hook-heavy “Nervous” depicts the heady exhilaration of being around someone you have a huge crush on.
Just as much of a must-hear is the sizzling R&B funk of the Justin Timberlake-channeling “Lost in Japan” (about a long-distance romance), and the easygoing riffs of “Where Were You in the Morning?,” penned in the same griping vein as John Mayer’s signature songs about fleeting love and heartbreak.
