Shawn Mendes Tackles Rumors About His Sexuality In New Song
He's so over the gossip.
Shawn Mendes is done letting the seemingly endless gossip about his sexuality get to him. On the singer’s emotional new song “The Mountain,” he brushes off all the noise about his love life in a telling verse. From the sound of it, Mendes is so at peace with himself that he no longer cares about fans misconstruing his sexuality.
Mendes premiered the confessional new track at an intimate concert in New York City earlier this month. The song will be featured on Mendes’ upcoming album Shawn, and as the record’s name suggests, the lyrics are deeply personal.
“The Mountain” chronicles Mendes’ various adventures and life-changing experiences, all of which led him to achieve a state of true self-love and peace. In this state, Mendes reveals that he doesn’t care about what anyone else has to say about him, or who he may love:
You can say I'm too young / You can say I'm too old / You can say I like girls or boys / Whatеver fits your mold
Mendes has previously spoken about how rumors about his sexuality used to really distress him. “Everyone's been calling me gay since I was 15 years old,” Mendes said on a 2020 episode of the Armchair Expert podcast. “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 sh*t.”
He went on to explain how stressful it was for him to try to find the right response to it all. “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 said. “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.”
With this new verse from “The Mountain,” it sounds like Mendes was finally able to put his feelings in words.
