After years of tabloid gossip and speculative memes, Shawn Mendes is talking about his sexuality again. The 26-year-old — who has been dating Camila Cabello on and off since 2019 — has previously said he is “not gay.” While performing at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado on Monday, the singer acknowledged that his sexuality had been a source of debate since he was “really young,” according to footage of the concert posted by fans. “I think it’s kind of silly because I think sexuality is a beautifully complex thing and it’s so hard to just put into boxes,” he said, adding that it “always felt like such an intrusion on something very personal to me.”
@lewisiana Shawn finally addressing his sexuality! #shawnmendes #friendsandfamily #redrock
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“The real truth about my life and my sexuality is, man, I’m just figuring it out like everyone. I don’t really know sometimes, and I know other times,” he said. “It feels really scary because we live in a society that has a lot to say about that.”
Mendes then performed a new song called “The Mountain,” which he played for the first time earlier this month. Writing it, he told the crowd, felt like an opportunity to address the rumors “in a way that felt close to my heart.” The lyrics hint at a newfound sense of acceptance around his private life, too: “Some days, I have a change of heart / You can say what you need to say / 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.”
Mendes previously addressed rumors around his sexuality in a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, acknowledging that he’d seen videos of fans analyzing his gestures and body language. “In the back of my heart, I feel like I need to go be seen with someone — like a girl — in public, to prove to people that I’m not gay,” he said at the time. “Even though in my heart I know that it’s not a bad thing. There’s still a piece of me that thinks that. And I hate that side of me.” Mendes has also been at the center of a commercially fruitful love triangle between Cabello, his former pandemic-stroll partner, and Sabrina Carpenter, who supposedly wrote several songs about the pair’s short-lived situationship. Though Mendes and Cabello parted ways in 2021 with coordinated Instagram announcements, the exes were recently seen together at the Copa América final in Miami, to the delight of Shawmilla fans everywhere.
“I’m trying to be really brave and just allow myself to just be human and feel things,” Mendes added Monday. “That’s all I wanna say about that for now.”