Shawn Mendes Makes Candid Statement About His Sexuality At Colorado Concert

Shawn Mendes offered a candid take on his sexuality this week, telling fans at a concert that he is “just figuring it out like everyone” while steering clear of traditional labels.

The three-time Grammy nominee broached the subject while introducing “The Mountain,” an as-yet-unreleased song that will appear on his forthcoming album, “Shawn.”

“You can say I’m too young, you can say I’m too old,” Mendes sings on the track. “You can say I like girls or boys, whatever fits your mold.”

Widely-circulated footage of Mendes’ Monday performance at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre shows him elaborating further on the lyrics.

“Since I was really young, there’s been this thing about my sexuality, and people have been talking about it for so long,” Mendes told the crowd, as seen on TikTok. “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.”

Shawn Mendes will release his fifth album, "Shawn," in November.

Wagner Meier via Getty Images

“The real truth about my life and my sexuality is that, man, I’m just figuring it out like everyone,” he added. “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.”

After noting that his goal was, simply, to “just allow myself to be a human,” he concluded: “That’s all I really want to say about that for now.”

Publicly, Mendes has only been in relationships with women. He dated Camila Cabello ― with whom he collaborated on the smash 2019 single, “Señorita” ― for about two years before the pair split in 2021. Since then, there has been tabloid speculation that he’s dating fellow singer Sabrina Carpenter, though the timeline of that as-yet unconfirmed relationship is unclear.

But as Mendes hinted in his concert speech, he’s been dogged by rumors over his sexuality for some time.

“I thought, ‘You fucking guys are so lucky I’m not actually gay and terrified of coming out,’” he told Rolling Stone after reading through internet comments that suggested he was secretly gay or bisexual. “That’s something that kills people. That’s how sensitive it is. Do you like the songs? Do you like me? Who cares if I’m gay?”

Later in that interview, he continued to shrug off the online chatter: “Maybe I am a little more feminine — but that’s the way it is. That’s why I am me.”

Due out Nov. 15, “Shawn” has been billed as Mendes’ “most musically intimate and lyrically honest work to date.” The album’s release comes a little more than two years after the singer-songwriter called off a world tour following just seven performances, citing the need for a mental health break.