As Shawn Mendes gears up for his biggest tour yet, he’s grounded himself in something he doesn’t talk about a lot: spirituality.
Speaking with Billboard, Shawn says he “hit a low point a few years ago,” and started meditating. Then he started reading religious texts and studying the Bhakti movement in Hinduism — a form of devotion that’s considered one of the paths to a perfect state of being, self-realization and freedom.
For more than a year, Shawn tells Billboard, he’s spent one day a week meditating and discussing scripture with Think Like a Monk author Jay Shetty.
“I think everybody has a moment where they just decide it’s time to kind of do something different,” Shawn notes, adding that spirituality is “a part of my life that is much bigger than I actually even let on.”
But his newfound devotion to spirituality hasn’t stopped him from making music. Shawn says he’s “writing a ton” for what will be the follow-up to his 2020 album, Wonder, and has lately been inspired by Coldplay, rock legend Paul Simon and Grammy-winning artist and Taylor Swift collaborator Bon Iver. According to Shawn, he’s drawn to artists who “don’t “put themselves in a box.”
As for the tabloid attention surrounding his split with Camila Cabello, Shawn tells Billboard, “I honestly don’t care.” What he’s focused on now, he says, is “making music that’s authentic.” He says his ambition is to “influence culture” and “make something very true.”
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