“I Refuse to Let the Industry Consume Me”: Shawn Mendes, by John Mayer

At 26 years old, Shawn Mendes is all grown up. Since teaching himself guitar at the age of 13, the Canadian prodigy has been breaking records and melting hearts with his dreamy pop hits and magnetic stage presence. But in 2022, following a public breakup and nearly a decade in the spotlight, the singer put it all on hold, citing post-pandemic stress as the reason for abruptly canceling his Wonder world tour. Two years and a lot of therapy later, Mendes is back with a new, stripped-down sound on his fifth LP, Shawn, and he’s ready to reclaim his pop star status. Only this time, as he tells his mentor John Mayer, he’s taking it day by day, one brick at a time.

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TUESDAY 10:30 AM JULY 30,2024 UPSTATE NY

SHAWN MENDES: [Motioning off-camera] Do you have a lighter, bro?

JOHN MAYER: First question, when Shawn Mendes asks for a lighter, what’s it for?

MENDES: [Laughs] It’s to light candles.

MAYER: Thought so.

MENDES: And occasionally some very good, ceremonial-grade tobacco.

MAYER: [Laughs] How are you?

MENDES: Good, man. Thank you for doing this, dude. Check this out, I’m in the studio.

MAYER: It looks like a movie set of a band rehearsing. It’s like you cast them just for this.

MENDES: I know.

MAYER: Does this mean you have it on your mind to tour as soon as the record’s out?

MENDES: I’m going to play some shows. Remember that song I played you? That comes out tomorrow.

MAYER: Which? I have the whole record.

MENDES: It’s called, “Isn’t That Enough.”

MAYER: Yes.

MENDES: And Thursday I’m going to announce six shows. I’m playing the whole album top to bottom.

MAYER: Small places?

MENDES: Yeah, like 500 cap.

MAYER: How do you feel about that? Do you feel like whatever it was that made you walk away from the stage is healed over?

MENDES: Yeah. When I was younger, I was always trying to find the big-picture answer. So if there was a problem, like the problem of touring, I’d try to solve the entire thing.

MAYER: What would that look like?

MENDES: I remember the conversation we had two or three years ago when you were like, “Listen to the structure of songs, the bones, and get rid of everything else.” It took me two years to come around to even wanting to do that.

MAYER: When I first heard this album, I thought, “He did it.” Doesn’t it feel good to bore yourself in the writing, and then have this incredible bloom of music when you play it back?

MENDES: Dude, I feel like being an artist is like never having the words to describe your life experience, like how beautiful existing as an artist is, and the lessons you’re taught just from creating itself.

MAYER: Mm-hmm.

MENDES: But fuck, I just learned if the very first brick you lay is a brick of truth and it’s basic and—

MAYER: Well, basic to you.

MENDES: Yeah. Then every single piece after that, it just directs your next brick. So instead of sitting here being like, “How do I feel about playing a big tour?” I’m like, “All I know is that I’m about to play a theater, so my next brick is the theater. I have six or seven of these theaters and I have a couple festivals, but if I just keep focusing on the next brick, I’m going to be fine.”

MAYER: It sounds like surrendering the idea that we can control both the music and people’s reactions to it. Sometimes you get so caught up in creating the reaction you want that the music doesn’t land. We talked about how there was this era that started about ten years ago and ended six, seven years ago, of playing things for people that immediately would make them flip out and go, “That’s so fire.”

MENDES: It’s funny how quickly we get trained to do things like that.

MAYER: This album is the opposite of that. It doesn’t sound like an artist trying to impress him or herself to their friend. It’s telling the truth. You got to the finish line of every one of these songs in the most beautiful way.

MENDES: Thanks, John.

MAYER: I think this is the record that you were looking for that was hiding inside you. Do you agree?

MENDES: Yeah, man. It’s awesome to be doing this interview with you because you know what I’m talking about. It’s exactly what you said. While you’re writing it, if you can humble yourself to the point of, “This is potentially boring right now, but it’s okay.”

MAYER: I call it the self-impressment threshold. Because it’s rare when you sit down and play something you didn’t know you had in you. You’ll always be working within your skill set. But we stop a lot of the time because we start with this massive blueprint of what we’re trying to write, and then we get caught up in it and go, “Well, I’m not even able to do that because this is boring.” Well, it’s boring to you because it’s like looking at your own face in the mirror. But what I think you did is, as soon as you heard the first song back that you thought was boring, you put a few instruments on top and a few harmony vocals on, and you realized—

MENDES: I was like, “This is exactly what I wanted.”

MAYER: And it sounds like you went on a tear.

MENDES: Yeah, man. The first week or two I kept pushing through this gunk, and then it got so beautiful and deep. I was like, “Wait, this is medicine.”

MAYER: Did you think to yourself, “This is easy”?

MENDES: To a degree, because I realized there was one mode, which was, “There’s a guitar in my hand and I strum the chords I know and I sing the melodies that come naturally out of me.” Anything that wasn’t natural, we just were like, “That’s not it.”

MAYER: Yeah. I have this four-step rule. Is it good? Do I like it? Is it me? Can I replicate it live and have a good time doing it? And it sounds like all of those four are smashed on every song.

MENDES: Dude, I never thought that the most stripped-back art I’ve made would return the most to me. It’s already given me more than any of my albums by so much, and I haven’t even shown anyone.

MAYER: You found the truth, not just in your message, but in how to make it.

MENDES: Yeah. My mom doesn’t say these things, but when I played her “Isn’t That Enough,” she was like, “Oh, you found yourself.”

MAYER: Do you feel like you did?

MENDES: Yeah. I think within finding yourself, there’s humor. There’s not taking myself so seriously. I don’t feel like I’m waking up every day and stepping into the role of Shawn. I feel like I’m just waking up as him.

MAYER: You’re not necessarily a moving target when it comes to figuring yourself out. If you figured another parcel of yourself out, do you get to keep that forever?

MENDES: I’m always here to let parts die, but subconsciously I hold onto some parts.

MAYER: What’s the newest part you like the most?

MENDES: Because of therapy and the experience of being burned and frozen, I’m not as extreme anymore.

MAYER: By what elements, relationship or industry?

MENDES: Both. When I say burned, I mean one end of the spectrum, and frozen the other. I am not doing this black-or-white, binary thing as much anymore, and that allows me to keep flowing. I would get onto a concept about life and how to live, and I’d hold that so tight for six months. At some point, it would all come crumbling down because I’d realize it was just one part of the picture, and then I’d basically redo that in a different way.

MAYER: Have you realized yet that that’s just growing up?

MENDES: Yeah. [Laughs] That’s what’s happening here.

MAYER: So do you think that you end up back in arenas?

MENDES: We’ll see, man. I’m having a fucking blast in the studio playing with the band. I guess my answer is, I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case.

MAYER: Let’s say they put up 30 dates. What would you do differently in your day-to-day life that would protect you from being overwhelmed?

MENDES: Just being really honest with myself, like, “What is my actual capacity?”

MAYER: How much of that involves saying no?

MENDES: An incredible amount of it.

MAYER: I love the way you’re positioning this music on social media, where it’s black and white. The album feels very clear and soft. It’s like what you’re wearing. It’s a white t-shirt and gray sweatpants. The aesthetic of what you’re posting is so true to the music, it blows me away.

MENDES: Thank you so much.

MAYER: What’s the song with the great sing-along?

MENDES: “Why Why Why”?

MAYER: It’s the one you put up where everyone’s sitting around the camp.

MENDES: [Sings] “My hand is still shaking—”

MAYER: That’s the one. It’s the kind of song that, if you weren’t even an artist and you and your friends just wrote that, you would get together—

MENDES: And sing it every time. That song was a gift from the cosmos.

MAYER: Did that come with the group? Or did you have that idea?

MENDES: It came completely in the moment. That song was the origin of the album. I come from Top 40 pop music, which is like Auto-Tune, hyper-compressed, hyper-in-the-box, and I had to relearn how to enjoy myself in a room with four people with a guitar in my hand. I know this sounds silly, but have you ever heard harmony with two other humans in the room with you singing? It’s just so—

MAYER: It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to keep singing it over and over again, just to feel it. There are so many moments on this album that I can picture you standing behind the console just losing your mind, listening back going, “Oh my god, that’s mine.”

MENDES: Totally, dude.

MAYER: You’ve done this for long enough that inevitably, there are things that have changed in culture and in the music industry, compared to when you started. What’s the most glaring difference in the industry or in the culture that surrounds music now, compared to when you were first making records?

MENDES: It’s hard to answer that question because it’s like, you’re asking a 15-year-old how he was seeing the music industry versus a 25-year-old. I see it differently than him and things are different.

MAYER: Are you old enough now to see the younger musicians coming out as different than you, or—

MENDES: Absolutely. Lyrically, sonically, everything feels younger. I can also be like, “Oh, that’s just pure, raw energy,” which was probably how people felt about me when I did “Treat You Better” and “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back.”

MAYER: So you’ve heard things that you can’t relate to?

MENDES: Absolutely.

MAYER: And how’s that reconciling going with getting older?

MENDES: I quite like it. I romanticize getting a little older and a little scruffier and smoking a cigarette occasionally and being like, “I’ve been through a couple things, but not everything.” I’m not one to hold on to my youth. I never have been.

MAYER: Me too. I’m 46, and I cannot stop. We all hold on to being in our thirties for 20 years, but I just want to just latch onto my late fifties early.

MENDES: That’s how I feel.

MAYER: Why am I going to pretend to be 36 for 20 years when I could just fall into being 60 at 46 and show up to the party early, get to know the space, and not delude myself or anyone else around me? As artists, you can afford to age gracefully—not just because you’re an artist and that’s cool, but because you have all of these achievements in your life to show you where the time went.

MENDES: And ideally, as a 25-year-old, I can be 15 and I could be 65. I have the ability to function through the whole spectrum.

MAYER: You said 25, and I’m thinking to myself, “Oh my god, John, what are you doing talking to this person like they’re reckoning with age and they’re 25?” But you probably are—

MENDES: Hey, man. You know I am.

MAYER: It’s relative.

MENDES: Of course. It’s funny, when you go through your first breakup, it feels like you all-of-a-sudden have all the answers in the world. You’re like, “Hey, man, I’ve seen it all at that point.” But to be honest, if someone was like, “What do you think the number one reason for you feeling generally better these days is?” I’d probably first answer therapy, and secondly, just taking myself less seriously.

MAYER: Yeah. This isn’t meant to diminish anything you’ve gone through, but everything that you’ve wrestled with just seems to be the natural progression of figuring out getting older. But because you’re so sensitive to things, it can read with the kind of severity that something’s a real emergency. You didn’t make a wrong turn.

MENDES: No.

MAYER: The idea that you’ve turned it into a record is so exciting to me. And to go back to the record—just on a technical level—for a minute, it’s almost decidedly simple. The arrangements—you didn’t overstack anything, which makes it feel intimate, like a campfire. It’s very finely tuned to the human attention span of 2024. It’s not TikTok, but it seems biorhythmically perfect for making someone feel good.

MENDES: Well, if I’m a representation of the general society that is digesting music, then I just did a good job at making something that I would listen to instead of what I think people should listen to.

MAYER: And you’re going to have so much fun playing this live, because you’re going to add instruments.

MENDES: Yeah. Songs like “Heart of Gold” allow me to express my Crosby, Stills & Nash, my Dire Straits, parts of me that I never felt onstage before. It’s special, man.

MAYER: Have you sung your old lyrics since writing this new album?

MENDES: Yeah. It’s an outrageous experience. All the older stuff just feels like rocket ship fuel. When we play it, it’s just like, “Brrr,” and then you come back down, barely processing it.

MAYER: So if you’re reading those lyrics, because we all use the teleprompter, what would you want to say to the kid who wrote them?

MENDES: I just love that kid, man. He’s the same kid that’s here right now, and he’s always doing his absolute best.

MAYER: No one tries harder than you. I was driving you home one night, and I remember turning onto Fountain or Santa Monica, and I said, “You seem like an alien that was sent to Earth to be a star, and you can’t compute hurt, you don’t understand.” I have a little bit of that, but you are what I would call a beautiful boy—

MENDES: That’s what my dad calls me.

MAYER: Really? I feel as if—because you’re so devoted to love and beauty—pain, cruelty, it doesn’t compute with you.

MENDES: Yeah. As I’ve gotten older, I have more capacity to hold it all. I was definitely the kid crying every day, all day at school. That’s just a part of it.

MAYER: And that’s how you know that your calling is writing.

MENDES: Yeah.

MAYER: In this all-consuming journey that you’re on, is there room for someone else right now?

MENDES: Absolutely. I refuse to let the industry consume me at this point. I finally realized that giving everything to music is not the best thing for my relationship with it. If I really want it to shine, I need to have other love in my life, and if I want that love to shine, I need to have music. [Laughs] I keep forgetting we’re doing an interview and I’m about to say things I probably shouldn’t, but dude, we—you know the vibes.

MAYER: Are you currently sharing space between your journey and being there for someone else, or are you just leaving that room?

MENDES: The room’s open. Right now I’m trying to not overromanticize every single thing. If there’s a good thing, I’m going to let it be a good thing and not suffocate it.

MAYER: I know exactly what you mean. I’m saying no to everything that’s coming my way post-August because I have to clear room. You tunnel through life if you’re going from the studio to the plane.

MENDES: You do, man.

MAYER: I don’t know if this has been kind of overdramatized based on what you’ve posted, but it seems like you do a lot of solo traveling.

MENDES: [Laughs] I knew that was where that was going.

MAYER: If someone were to reduce your story, that guy’s been in the jungles of Borneo for three years. [Laughs] What percentage of time do you spend at home and what percentage of time do you spend on these escapades?

MENDES: Even the question of home is something I think about all the time. “What is home and when do I feel at it?” Because I certainly don’t feel at it when I’m in Toronto. I feel like sometimes my side gig is being a researcher of the word “home” and what it means. That’s a big reason why I do these escapades. It’s so easy to get in the bubble of, like, everything’s about me and what happens in my industry. But you go somewhere else in the world and all that is stripped away from you. It’s better than any therapy.

MAYER: How do you take that state of mind with you?

MENDES: Wherever you go, there you are. Home ultimately is you. It’s the way you carry yourself when you’re alone and it’s the way you carry yourself around people. For me, it’s making sure I make my bed and light a candle in the evening. I’m ultimately in control of whether home is a feeling I get to experience or not.

MAYER: No one understands. Every time I pack for a tour, I truly believe that it’s going to be the time I successfully bring with me who I am at home. And invariably, Four Seasons in the middle of nowhere—

MENDES: Feels like a Four Seasons in the middle of nowhere.

MAYER: It’s an away game. I’ve brought the blanket, I’ve brought the candle, I’ve brought all these things I thought were going to work, but I didn’t bring the unifying mass that was supposed to come with me, which is the comfort I have at home. People don’t understand, because we get paid very well to manage this stuff, but when you get burnt out, nothing helps.

MENDES: Nothing.

MAYER: It sounds like booking the shows the way you have is the treatment for that, right?

MENDES: It is, dude. It’s so easy to get excited and want to have things get big quickly, but it’s like the boring thing—if you can just not impress yourself right off the bat, you might actually end up with something really, really special.

MAYER: I’m so proud. You got there, you found it, you did it. Are you thinking about—and I’m not villainizing this—the cultural reward of people being interested in you, people wanting to date you, people wanting to DM you? And being back in conversation?

MENDES: Of course. I’d be such a liar to not admit that.

MAYER: [Laughs]

MENDES: I’m a lot more secure in who I am, and it feels really nice to put something out that’s going to portray me that way. But sometimes I’m not sure the juice is worth the squeeze, being in the conversation all the time. It’s always on my mind, like, how are people going to react? I delete Instagram, because I’m like, “I’m not going to read the comments and be like, have any celebrities commented on this photo?” And then I redownload it and I’m immediately looking again. I have a lot of acceptance and patience for my humanity, but at the same time, I really want to exist in a more authentic way.

MAYER: You know what this makes me think of? George Harrison on The Dick Cavett Show after the Beatles broke up.

MENDES: I so resonate with him.

MAYER: He’s 100 percent spiritually residing in the authentic space, to the extent where he’s looking around at the lights. He’s transcended it all, and what you’re talking about reminds me of that idea of, “I want to be in this world, but I don’t want this world to subsume and become me.”

MENDES: It’s like I don’t want this world to be dictating when I am on or off.

MAYER: Yeah. If I were to sew this up—you say something several times on the album. There’s a song called “Isn’t That Enough,” and then there’s another song that has the lyric, “Isn’t that enough?” Do you get the sense now that everything is enough?

MENDES: If you’re asking for enough success, it’s never going to be enough. But I think I’ve learned to have enough come from more places in my life.

MAYER: You’ve diversified the portfolio. I’ve never seen someone dedicate 100 percent of their life to being the artist that they want to be and not end up on the side of the road, metaphorically.

MENDES: I think that’s an extremely important thing to pass to the next generation, is that this sacrifice for pouring all of yourself into your art is immense.

MAYER: And this generation’s figuring it out. I see a lot of young artists going, “I just want to do what makes me happy.” They have a healthy distrust of what’s on the other side of that rainbow.

MENDES: They do. They’ve seen enough of their superheroes fall.

MAYER: That’s right. These songs, when I hear them back, I go, “That should explain to everyone why you made every decision you ever made in your life.” It’s really a gorgeous record. And I’ll be right there when it comes out.

MENDES: Dude, thank you for your time, man. This means the world, and I love you, dude.

MAYER: I love you, too. I’m just so happy for you.

MENDES: Thank you for everything.

MAYER: Always. I love you, man. You’re the best.

MENDES: Love you, brother.

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Grooming: Anna Bernabe using Dior Beauty and Oribe.

Market Director: Lucy Gaston.

Photography Assistant: Jake Holler.

Fashion Assistant: Nicholson Baird.

Production: The Morrison Group.

Production Assistant: Francisco Serrano.

Post-production: Camerin Stoldt.