The grayscale photo of Shawn Mendes staring down the camera with a far-off piercing gaze found in old photographs is textless, though it depicts him with more hair than usual—he’s aging and it’s human.
But that’s precisely the point. The album is about the artist, the fallible person Mendes is.
The Canadian singer and songwriter released his fifth album, “Shawn,” on Nov. 15 after postponing the original Oct. 18 release date. The album is highly anticipated since it is Mendes’ first album after a two-year hiatus from performances. Mendes cited mental health concerns for the break, especially after his highly publicized breakup with fellow artist Camilla Cabello.
The opening song “Who I Am” is foremost an apology. He admits that he is “sorry” but he’s “gotta do it / gotta let you down,” an address to his fans and an explanation for his absence in the musical world. These lyrics seem to address the cancellation of 80 shows from “Wonder: The World Tour” in 2021. In this first track, Mendes sings acapella except for a light acoustic strumming: “And it broke my heart when I canceled tour / Had my soul and my head going back and forth.”
The first song establishes the multi-faceted crux of the album: Mendes’ purpose, identity, and path forward. It sets the stage for music that swings on the pendulum from sadness to anger to acceptance to hope and back again and again.
Following the reflective opener comes the upbeat and frustrated “Why Why Why,” which Mendes first released as a single on Aug. 8 to promote the upcoming album. It’s a fast-paced expression of feeling stuck in and haunted by a cycle of events and traumas, as lyrics “Feels like everything goes ‘round and ‘round” and “Everything that hurts me’s still the same” embody.
It’s a song to scream, sob, jump around, and dance to. The catchy beat and high-energy lyrics are at his emotional peak. Mendes is proverbially crying out into the void, asking the titular “why why why” repeatedly as the guitar strums and the beat grows practically frantic. The song sounds like how it feels to run through a field as fast as you can, faster and faster until you flop down exhausted.
The next songs on the album, “That’s The Dream,” “Nobody Knows,” and “Isn’t That Enough,” are similar in their stripped-back, country-adjacent sound, building up to the sixth track, “Heart of Gold,” which is pure acoustic goodness, introducing a tambourine and more groove than the country feel of the previous few songs.
The next song, “Heavy,” centers that tambourine in a smooth pop context—Mendes’ forte, especially with “In Between,” the most traditionally Shawn song on the album—but as the title suggests, emotion hangs “heavy.”
The penultimate two songs, “The Mountain” and “Rolling Right Along,” work as a duo of campfire songs, reaffirming that the album has a core in Mendes’ return to his roots, both musically and personally. The woodland setting appears in his “Why Why Why” music video, complete with a lake and a campfire. The two songs feel cozy and welcoming, while still holding enormous emotional depth in the lyrics and musical composition.
Mendes finishes the album not with a 12th original, but with his rendition of the time-honored and acclaimed song “Hallelujah” originally written by fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen. Here, Mendes keeps it simple, paying homage to the many artists like Jeff Buckley and Pentatonix who’ve covered the piece before.
This choice hammers home even further that this album is about his journey back to music through immense personal growth and soul searching. Mendes adds his name to the list of artists who’ve put their stamp on the song, finding spades of new meaning in its spiritual lyrics.
In his cover, Mendes makes a singular change in the lyrics. In the later verse, he switches the words from “it’s not somebody who’s seen the light” to “it’s not some pilgrim who claims to have seen the light.” It’s subtle, but holds a world of importance, and integrates the song into the rest of the album.
“Shawn” crafts a tale of self-discovery and growth, taking new listeners and long-time fans alike to the often hidden heart of who he is as a singer and human being.
