Shawn Mendes is getting candid about his sexuality.
The singer opened up to his fans during a concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado on Monday, where he also performed his upcoming song “The Mountain” which features lyrics about the conversation surrounding his sexuality.
“Some days, I have a change of heart / You can say what you need to say,” Mendes sings at the show, in footage shared on TikTok. “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.”
The “Stitches” artist later weighed in on the conversation during the For Friends and Family Tour performance.
“Since I was really young, there’s been this thing about my sexuality, and people have been talking about it for so long,” Mendes said in a video posted on TikTok. “I think it’s kind of silly, because I think sexuality is such a beautifully complex thing, and it’s so hard to just put into boxes. It always felt like such an intrusion on something very personal to me, something that I was figuring out in myself, something that I had yet to discover, and still have yet to discover.”
The “Treat You Better” singer added that he’s “speaking freely now” so he can be “closer to everyone.”
“The real truth about my life and my sexuality is that, man, I’m just figuring it out like everyone. I don’t really know sometimes, and I know other times. And it feels really scary because we live in a society that has a lot to say about that,” Mendes continued telling his fans. “I’m trying to be really brave and just allow myself to be a human and feel things. And that’s all I really want to say about that for now.”
Mendes, who is set to release his self-titled LP on Nov. 15, has dated Camila Cabello on and off over the years.
The “If I Can’t Have You” artist previously commented on the discussion about his sexuality on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in 2020.
“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 at the time. “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.”
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