Shawn Mendes used his music to make a rare comment about the rumors regarding his sexuality.
Mendes, 26, performed his upcoming song “The Mountain” at a recent concert date, according to footage uploaded by a fan. In the video, Mendes subtly weighed in on the conversations surrounding his personal life.
“Some days, I have a change of heart / You can say what you need to say,” he sang via a clip posted on TikTok earlier this month. “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 has previously spoken out about the stress that came with the speculation into his sexuality.
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“In the back of my heart, 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,” he told Rolling Stone in 2018. “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.”
The singer recalled watching his own interviews and analyzing his voice and body language because of the rumors, adding, “I thought, ‘You f—ing guys are so lucky I’m not actually gay and terrified of coming out.’ That’s something that kills people. That’s how sensitive it is. Do you like the songs? Do you like me? Who cares if I’m gay?”
Two years later, Mendes referred to the rumors as “frustrating.”
“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 during an episode of the “Armchair Expert” podcast in December 2020. “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 went on to reflect on finding a “divine middle ground” with his sexuality.
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“I didn’t grow up wrestling. I grew up getting my hair braided on New Year’s Eve. It just completely depends on the way you grew up in your life and your surroundings,” he explained at the time. “I’m still a little bit more manly than that so I don’t know, it’s a little confusing so I’m just gonna let it be what it is.”
He continued: “Everyone’s been calling me gay since I was 15 years old. I’m not gay and I’m like, ‘What does that mean?’ I had these problems with the way my voice sounded. I’m like, ‘How do I sit?’ I’m always first to cross my legs and sit with a position of this feminine style and I really suffered with that s—. .I think a lot of guys go through that and, even worse than that, there are so many guys who are gay and in the closet and must be hearing s— like that and being like, ‘I’m terrified to come out.’”
Mendes, who has been romantically linked to Hailey Bieber, Camila Cabello and Sabrina Carpenter, slammed assumptions about his sexuality, telling the Guardian that same month, “There was a desperation for me to come out as being gay, which is such a ridiculous thing. I got upset because I know people who are gay who haven’t come out and I know the suffering they experience because of that. It’s just completely ignorant and insensitive of people to be on that s—.”
