I want to get one thing straight: Shawn Mendes’ doesn’t make good music. Or at least he doesn’t make good music from the standpoint of any pop purist. He’s another white male singer with a good voice and typical music about romantic love. He’s part of the new resurgence of music whose themes and style belong more to the early 2000s a la N-Sync and Backstreet Boys. He’s another Ed Sheeran, another Charlie Puth, another Justin Bieber, another One Direction, etc. Shawn Mendes isn’t considered good pop music anymore than Drake is considered good rap music or Twenty One Pilots considered good reggae music. But I have to be honest — He appeals to me.
He doesn’t appeal to me the same way contemporary pop appeals to teenage girls. His first album Handwritten isn’t outwardly creative, and is simply an emulation of the style and content of Ed Sheeran and Plain White T’s. With that said, I love Handwritten. With the exception of standard lyrics, hooks in almost every song are helplessly catchy and diverse. Production is also stunning and clean, but these aren’t the reasons I love Shawn Mendes. I could say the same thing about Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran. What stands out to me in Shawn Mendes is his voice.
I don’t want to use the word “unique,” because it’s a subjective term. The degrees of uniqueness depend on what people think should stand out in a voice. From an objective point of view, Shawn Mendes isn’t an any better singer than Ed Sheeran. However, unlike having a bland voice like Justin Bieber and unlike Ed Sheeran who started out 23, Shawn Mendes is 16. He doesn’t sound like a child like Justin Bieber in his debut, which doesn’t make it awkward when he sings about romantic relationships, but he doesn’t sound too matured either, so when he sings that he’s just a Kid in Love that doesn’t want to grow up, it also works (something, by the way, Ed Sheeran could never do, which is why his most popular song Thinking Out Loud is not about whimsically loving as a kid, but about long term dedication and fidelity in love). His 16-year-old voice also carries huge depths and is extremely clear. He doesn’t scratch his voice to show that he’s more manly, and this turns out to be his greatest feature. When he sings high notes, it sounds effortless, in contrast to singers like Ed Sheeran whose charisma comes from the energy that is squeezed out when he belts out high notes. There’s none of that in Shawn Mendes.
Some notable songs that stand out are Something Big, which is a loud, bombastic song about feeling like his future is bright and has one of the most refreshing and clear hits on a high note. Strings is a song, in which he tries to mimic the rap style of Ed Sheeran and Eminem (both of which are his influences), albeit has a weak hook and standard lyrics about being in love. Bring it Back is a one-verse song that gets to the point and is about regretting a break up and showcases his vocal power as far as clarity goes. Imagination is about imagining a possible relationship, but it never budding, and it showcases his extreme vocal range, and possibly has one of the best production decisions when the instrumentals is cut off just as he sings the last five syllables of his powerful hook: “imagination.”
Again, with these tiny exceptions, the content of songs are extremely simple:
- Life of the Party — about how nonchalant his crush is
- Stitches — how heartbroken he is after a breakup
- Never Be Alone — assuring romantic interest by telling her to think of him when she misses him
- Kid in Love — about how his love for her is immature because he’s just a kid, but he doesn’t care
- I Don’t Even Know Your Name — about love at first sight
- Strings — he wants his relationship to be meaningful (to the point he says he wants strings attached)
- Aftertaste — about how he doesn’t care that he hurt her feelings after breakup
- Air — about how trapped he feels in a relationship
- Crazy — about how he thought he didn’t need a girl, but he was crazy wrong
Etc.
Essentially, the content of these songs aren’t unique to him. I can find a dozen Justin Bieber songs, a dozen Zayn songs, and a dozen Ed Sheeran songs that fit many of those descriptions, but my point is clear: Handwritten was a charming album to me.
The same was the case when Handwritten was reissued as Handwritten: Revisited with live versions of songs and four new songs:
And it’s great. I Know What You Did Last Summer is a loud, fun song about knowing the infidelity of your significant other. Act Like You Love Me is a song about not wanting to accept that she doesn’t love him anymore. Running Low is the opposite of Act Like You Love Me being about how he still thinks she’s a meaningful person, but he can’t love her anymore. Memories, probably my favorite Shawn Mendes song, is a soft spoken song about keeping memories of his love, that turns into a powerful presentation of his vocal skills.
So when Illuminate, his second album, was announced on July 6, 2016, I was beyond excited. Even if it was virtually the same album (which is what I expected), I would still enjoy it.
The first tease we get is the first few seconds of his new single, Treat You Better, and it’s great:
He only sings five syllables, but it seems like another Shawn Mendes song, presumably about how he will treat his girl better than before, and asking her to be with him. I am still excited for presumably, Handwritten Part II,… but then the single comes out:
And… it’s not good. I certainly don’t hate it, but his choruses are especially bad. But maybe this is an exception. Maybe, I’ll like the other songs. Then his second single, the song Shawn Mendes has been most excited to put out, Mercy, comes out:
In the first few bars of the song, he hums a distinct melody, and I found it to be really soothing. The first few lines of his verses, also good. But as soon as it got to the chorus, it sounded… subpar. I’m not feeling the vocal power Mendes brought in his first album. Later live, he also performs one of his songs on the album, Ruin:
And.. I still don’t like it. But maybe the singles are the worst part of the album. So on September 23, 2016, Illuminate by Shawn Mendes is released:
I am completely disappointed. I am quick to point out the shallow flaws in the album. There’s no fun bombastic song like Something Big on the album or anything stylistically unique like Strings on the album. Content and style-wise, every song is standard, but then I realize, these are all the same flaws the first album had, except in Handwritten, I loved it to the point I overlooked all of the flaws. The production didn’t get any worse than the first album either, then what is it? Why am I so confused about why the second album is so disappointing, when I loved the first album.
I keep listening to it, and I still don’t get it. There almost seems to be no difference stylistically among the two albums, so then why am I disappointed? So, the story ends here for a while. I stop having any more interest in Shawn Mendes, and I stop listening to him.
Cut to April 20, 2017, nearly 7 months after Illuminate was released, he releases a new single. But this isn’t a new single for his upcoming album or a single to tease any kind of new project. This was to tease his Illuminate tour, saying,
“The minute I wrote this song I knew I wanted to get it out before my tour started, to give fans something new and fresh in addition to everything from Illuminate… I can’t wait to perform it on the tour, and for everyone to hear it. It’s equal parts what is amazing about this album, and what I’m so excited for about the music I have coming up next.”
Yes, this means that this single was added onto his album Illuminate taking the #1 in the tracklist, instead of Ruin, and…:
Listening to it 7 months since I last listened to Shawn Mendes, I… fairly enjoyed this song. Though the lyricism doesn’t elevate among his old work, the production is unique, and I finally enjoyed his hook again, and immediately, I realized why I didn’t like Illuminate. It was the same reason I absolutely adored Handwritten: his voice.
His voice changed, and to notice it, you’d have to pay close attention to it, but with the release of There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back, it’s not hard to tell how his voice has changed. It didn’t become darker, but the depth I complimented has shrunk, and it seems so has his diaphragm. Whenever he reaches high notes, it’s not full of clarity as it once were. And if you pay attention to his age, it makes sense, too. Puberty usually happens to boys between the age of 14 and 16 and when Illuminate had come out, he was 17. So, I immediately took this to Google, and I was shocked:
There’s nothing there.
There’s a video of Shawn Mendes using Snapchat voice filter, a compilation of his voice cracks on stage, discussion of Shawn Mendes’ voice, and three somehow relevant articles to Shawn Mendes: there’s not one community of fangirls that are talking about his voice change, not even on Reddit.
Four of the first five threads aren’t even about Shawn Mendes or his voice (One of the most popular threads was a crazy theory someone had about how Shawn Mendes was secretly a transgender man that went through trauma because he was forced to go through a C-Section operation.(Yeah, I know)).
I could not believe I was the only person to recognize this. I even know the exact set of days this change happened:
On April 10th of 2015, Shawn Mendes tweets, “Was just informed that my voice is going through a second stage of puberty and thats why i cant control falsetto. Pissed” And this change isn’t hard to see. Compare these two performances of Life of the Party:
September of 2014:
September of 2016:
Or compare these two performances of Something Big:
May of 2015:
September of 2016:
At first, you can’t even tell the difference. But as he keeps reaching higher and higher notes, old Shawn’s depth, clarity, and effortlessness shines, while new Shawn felt like he had to squeeze his energy out to his those notes just like Ed Sheeran. The powerful explosive note I was talking about in Something Big, earlier, doesn’t feel powerful anymore. Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it.
And this is what has bothered me in every song in Illuminate. There’s no better example than There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back, in which the higher set chorus is just Shawn Mendes scratching his throat, instead of the depth and clarity we were used to in Handwritten. Remember when I said I enjoyed the first few notes of Treat You Better and Mercy? Well, it’s because when he sings at a comfortable vocal range, you can barely make out the changes in his vocal cords, but you immediately notice when he reaches any high note. To make something clear, objectively, his old voice is clearly better. Any vocal trainer will tell you the same thing, pointing out that Mendes’ vocal range has become weaker and drier. That’s why when he reaches high notes, it sounds thin and stringy. From a subjective point of view, however, it’s ultimately up to personal preference. Obviously, his fans still love his more matured voice. With this realization, I decide to relisten to Illuminate.
It starts to make sense. Knowing how his voice has changed, it makes sense that Illuminate wasn’t Handwritten Part II. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be the 16-year-old pure boy that’s whimsically a Kid in Love or even someone who falls in love with someone at first sight. His music wouldn’t make sense and his voice certainly wouldn’t complement it. Instead, Illuminate deals with implications of these relationships. Of course, there are moments when Illuminate is simple like Lights On when he sings about how he’s not interested in having sex with the girl, but he loves her for who she is, or Ruin where he’s singing to the girl that he has the best intentions and that he’s the “only one” for her. Even the extremely poppy There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back, is just about how he will relentlessly love the girl. But the moments of Kid in Love or I Don’t Even Know Your Name are gone. Illuminate is intentionally drained of all naivete he once had in Handwritten. Remember that the two popular singles of Handwritten were Stitches, a standard heartbreak song, and Life of the Party, a standard love song. The two singles of Illuminate are probably also standard/generic, but the contents are elevated. In Treat You Better, he asks a girl who’s already in a relationship to be with him instead, and in Mercy, he destructively begs a girl, not to be with him, but to forgive him, saying he’s willing to die for her. Three Empty Words is about how he can’t keep telling her he loves her. In it, he doesn’t use the word, “love,” once, a word he liberally used in Handwritten. In Like This, he’s forced to admit the reality that he can’t be with her anymore, even though he put in so much into the relationship. Note how it’s a very anti-Kid in Love reality. In Kid in Love he sang about how he didn’t care whether or not it’ll work out, but in Like This, he’s forced to care. In No Promises, he refuses to make promises because he’s convinced they can’t be kept. In Bad Reputation, he’s in love, not with pure-hearted angel, but someone he admits is a mainstream promiscuous girl, but he understands her in ways no one else does.
But none of the songs I listed hammers this theme more than the song, Honest, probably by favorite song on Illuminate. It starts out seemingly as an upbeat standard song about another breakup. There’s a significant contrast between the tone of the song, which is generally positive, and what is being said by him, which is about how he can’t be with her anymore. When he sings the high chorus, instead of singing with gruff, it showcases his versatility in falsettos, something that harkens back more to Handwritten than Illuminate. This all makes sense in the next line when he sings:
In the second verse, he tells her that he’s trying to be honest by saying he used to be “that kid in love,” but he isn’t anymore. You can even tell this was such an important line to the song because the rhyme scheme is broken. And this is all for the sake of a direct reference and connection to the first album.
And with this, Illuminate becomes the rare type of album that is hyper aware of its singer and his history. Again, in the scope of everything, Illuminate is not the best album in the world or a classic album; it’s not even close. But it does present Shawn Mendes for who he is. As I’m writing this, Shawn Mendes is only at the beginning of his career and certainly at the beginning of his prime. And with only two albums, he crafts storytelling in the most subtle ways. You might be reading this, thinking everything I’ve been saying is trivial, but it’s not. When I say Shawn Mendes is another Ed Sheeran or another Justin Bieber, to an extent, it’s true. But the extent to which it is true starts falling apart as soon as you delve into the kind of Shawn Mendes music makes. If you feel like Illuminate isn’t going to age well, you’re right. It’s not. His voice is still going to change as he turns 30 or 40, and at that point, thank God Illuminate won’t age well because it shouldn’t. He’s not going to make Handwritten Part III or Illuminate Part II, and in this world of contemporary pop, it’s an underappreciated and beautiful feat. ◼
