‘Since I was really young, there’s been this thing about my sexuality and people have been talking about it for so long,’ singer-songwriter said at a recent show
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Shawn Mendes addressed speculation about his sexuality during a show at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre Monday night.
“Since I was really young, there’s been this thing about my sexuality and people have been talking about it for so long,” Mendes, 26, said in fan-shot videos posted to social media. “And I think it’s kind of silly because 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 to me on something that was very personal. That I was figuring out in myself, something that I had yet to discover and still have yet to discover.”
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The Canadian singer gave the speech as he introduced his unreleased track The Mountain, which contains the lyrics: “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.”
Of the song, Mendes, who has been romantically linked to Camila Cabello and Sabrina Carpenter, said The Mountain “felt really important to me because it felt like a moment where I could address it in a way that felt close to my heart.”
“I guess I’m speaking freely now because I just want to be closer to everyone and be in my truth,” he continued. “The real truth about my life and about my sexuality is that, man, I’m just figuring it out like everyone and I don’t really know sometimes, and I know other times. And it feels really scary because we live in a society that has a lot to say about that, and I’m trying to be really brave and just allow myself to be a human and feel things. That’s all I really want to say about that, for now,” he concluded.
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Mendes has spoken about his sexuality in the past, telling Rolling Stone in 2018, “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. Even though in my heart I know that it’s not a bad thing. There’s still a piece of me that thinks that. And I hate that side of me.”
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In a video posted on Snapchat back in 2016, when he was still a teenager, he spoke frustratingly about the constant speculation. “First of all, I’m not gay. Second of all, it shouldn’t make a difference if I was or if I wasn’t. The focus should be on the music and not my sexuality,” Mendes said at the time.
During an episode of the Armchair Expert podcast in December 2020, Mendes said the rumours left him feeling “real anger” when he thought about his friends in the LGBTQ+ community.
“There were some people in my life that I was very, very close to who were gay and in the closet. And I felt this real anger for those people,” he said. “It’s such a tricky thing. You want to say, ‘I’m not gay but it’d be fine if I was gay — but also there’s nothing wrong with being gay but I’m not.’ You don’t really know how to respond to the situation.”
Mendes’ latest album, Shawn, drops next month.
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