Shawn Mendes says he’s still ‘figuring out’ his sexuality: ‘It feels really scary’
There’s nothing holding Shawn Mendes back from getting candid.
On Monday, the singer, 26, addressed the crowd in between songs while on his For Friends and Family Tour at his stop at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado.
During his recent concerts, Mendes has been performing an upcoming track “The Mountain” with lyrics seemingly weighing in on conversations about his sexuality.
“Some days, I have a change of heart / You can say what you need to say,” he belted out in footage shared to TikTok. “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.”
Mendes then elaborated on the conversation during the show.
“Since I was really young, there’s been this thing about my sexuality, and people have been talking about it for so long,” he told the crowd, via a clip shared by a fan on TikTok. “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 on something very personal to me, something that I was figuring out in myself, something that I had yet to discover, and still have yet to discover,” the musician continued, adding he’s “speaking freely now” so he can be “closer to everyone.”
“The real truth about my life and my sexuality is that, man, I’m just figuring it out like everyone. 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.”
“I’m trying to be really brave and just allow myself to be a human and feel things. And that’s all I really want to say about that for now,” Mendes noted.
Mendes also spoke about his dating life, telling the audience that these days, he wants the “pressure” off with finding “The One.”
“When you’re single, there’s this pressure of looking for ‘The One,’ who’s ‘The One?’… Damn that’s a lot of pressure to put on someone when you first start dating,” he told fans, per a video shared on TikTok.
“For me, I’ve just been trying to take that pressure off of whoever, and just allow myself to experience the love that is happening in that moment, wherever and however that’s happening. Man, we all need a little bit of cuddling, a little bit of hugging,” Mendes added, before launching into his next song “In Between.”
Mendes has dated Camila Cabello on and off since 2019, and was previously linked to Hailey Bieber and Sabrina Carpenter. In 2020, the star discussed rumors about his sexuality while speaking to Dax Shepard on his “Armchair Expert” podcast.
“It was so, so frustrating for me because there were some people in my life that I was very, very close to, who were gay and in the closet,” Mendes told Shepard, 49, at the time.
He continued, “And I felt like this real anger for those people. 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.”
His upcoming self-titled LP comes out Nov. 15.
