Canadian singer-songwriter Shawn Mendes has opened up about his sexuality, telling fans at a concert that he’s still “figuring it out.”
The “Isn’t That Enough” hit-maker was performing at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, in Colorado, on Monday night (28 October) when he took a moment to speak about his personal life.
“There’s this thing about my sexuality, and people have been talking about it so long,” he said, referring to having had to bat away rumours that he is gay ever since finding fame as a teenager after posting videos of himself covering Justin Bieber songs on social media platform Vine.
Now 26, he finds the rumours “kind of silly because sexuality is such a beautifully complex thing, and it’s so hard to just put into boxes”.
Mendes went on to say: “It always felt like such an intrusion on something very personal to me, something I was figuring out in myself, something I had yet to discover and still have yet to discover it. The truth about my life and my sexuality is I’m just figuring it out like everyone and it feels really scary because we live in a society that has a lot to say about that.
“I’m trying to be brave and allow myself to be a human and feel things. That’s all I really want to say for now.”
He then launched into a rendition of “The Mountain”, on which he addresses the rumours further.
“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 mould,” he sings.
Despite having dated fellow singers, including Camila Cabello and Sabrina Carpenter, Mendes has spent years denying he is gay. In 2016, he told fans on a Snapchat video: “I don’t usually do this and bring up problems, but I was on YouTube just watching some of my interviews, and I was going down the comments and noticed a lot of people were saying I gave them a ‘gay vibe’.
“First of all, I’m not gay… second, it shouldn’t make a difference if I was or I wasn’t. The focus should be on the music and not my sexuality.”
Then, during interview with The Guardian in 2020, he branded the continuing speculation ignorant.
“There was a desperation for me to come out as being gay, which is such a ridiculous thing,” he said. “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 ignorant and insensitive of people to be on that s**t.”
After videos of Mendes’ speech from last night’s show were shared online, social media users urged people to stop the questioning.
“I’m not even a fan of Shawn but this man has been harassed for what, a decade, over his sexuality?” one person wrote. “He shouldn’t have to open up about anything if he doesn’t want to.”
Another said: “They were brutal for more than a decade, straight up making fun of him. Could’ve left him alone. Who cares if he’s straight or queer? Let the man breathe.”
A third asked: “Can we normalise not prying on people’s sexuality?”
The singer’s new album, Shawn, is out on 15 November.
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