What Shawn Mendes Has Gone Through

The teen-pop megastar reveals a dark—or at least darker—side on his make-or-break third album.

- Dan Hyman

For a few seconds, Shawn Mendes is off the clock. It’s a sweltering afternoon in a Hollywood parking lot, and he’s slouched into the backseat of a 1965 Ford convertible, in which he’s just had his photo taken, with eyes closed. ¶ Today’s already been a marathon: Mendes, 19, woke up at six for an early workout and took a vocal lesson at eight, then sang in an SUV with James Corden for Carpool Karaoke before teaching the late-night host to ice-skate, all in preparation for the release of his new self-titled third album, the one he hopes will transform him from teen-pop heartthrob into serious adult artist. And if it requires some minor workaholism, he’s okay with that. “People would say it’s wrong to look at it that way,” he tells me later, but growing up in the Toronto suburb of Pickering, Ontario, “I was obsessed with being really, really good at things”— first soccer, then hockey, and at 13, playing guitar and covering Adele and Rihanna songs on YouTube. Even now, he says, “I tell my vocal coach I want to be the best male singer in the world.”

His voice is a pleasantly serviceable tenor, but given all he’s accomplished so far, anything’s possible. By 14, Mendes had 3 million followers on YouTube and Vine. A year later, he was signed to Island Records and opening for Taylor Swift on tour, which helped push his debut album, Handwritten, to No. 1. After his second album, 2016’s Illuminate, spawned two Top 10 singles, “Treat You Better” and “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back,” he was headlining arenas himself.