INSiDE THE WORLD OF SHAWN MENDES

After three No 1 albums and four major tours, the Vine star pop prince rapidly climbed the music royalty ranks. But time out from performance has given him pause to reflect on the peculiar loss that follows success and, last year, much of it came back to him – time with family, old friends, the simple acts of living. What’s more, it brought a pensive new record that reframes his young career and – lest we forget – lockdown’s most “liked” locks

- DAVID LEVESLEY

Shawn Mendes is having an epiphany. He’s had a lot of them recently, but I just happen to be present for this one. I had wanted to know if the fact he started his music career on social media influenced the way he made art. He pauses. (Mendes, it should be noted, rarely pauses.) “I never thought about that,” he muses. “But that makes a lot of sense. My brain was kind of wired to communicate to the masses, before the music even started.”

Just as The X Factor-bred Harry Styles, Nickelodeon was the training ground of Ariana Grande and Disney-honed Miley Cyrus’ craft, it was the now-defunct video platform Vine that gave us Shawn Mendes. It was there that he found success performing six-second covers of famous songs, and after his version of Justin Bieber’s “As Long As You Love Me” blew up, he took his chance to become a star. He signed to Island Records at 15 years old, with a million fans begging for a single before he even released one.