Shawn Mendes Wonder album review

One of the most surreal moments in this year’s most surreal musical documentary occurs during the final footage of director Grant Singer’s new Netflix film, Shawn Mendes: in wonder – which chronicles the making of the 22-year-old Toronto singer-songwriter’s fourth album, Wonder, and the world tour that took him across five continents throughout 2019 – as Shawn sits mute and despondent, pecking at his iPhone, and his disembodied text-to-speech voice delivers a soliloquy: “These next ten years are when all i do is go full speed. It’s like an athlete in his prime. I must continue. We’re immediately transported to a hazy shore where Mendes waves to the cloudy sky with open arms, an acoustic guitar growling intensely in the background, as if to say he’s ready to weather the storm and move on. He yelled, barked and yelled at himself hoarse in São Paulo, Brazil, playing with a combination of laryngitis and sinus infection, and having to cancel a concert at the stadium on doctor’s orders. He’s taking it hard. The moment stands out in a film that otherwise resembles a long-running video clip, dense in aesthetics if not in substance; Mendes never lets us see him sweat. He’s a happy pop star of a genre they don’t do so much anymore. He came to post acoustic covers of pop and rock songs on YouTube, like Justin Bieber, and incorporated the sound into his own work. His early music dealt with the fine folk-pop that was once home to cheerful coffee bros like Ed Sheeran, all effortless vocal tracks and short, disturbed guitar licks. They’re always eye-catching, sometimes gloriously, and sometimes hellish. “Nothing is holding me back” is unbridled euphoria; ‘Never Be Alone’ is at the heart of Mumford.

Everything is a bit too clean and predictable, however, a reality that Mendes seems to notice. The writing and arrangements of her self-titled 2018 album spiced up the usual range of soothing Mayer-isms with light funk jams like “Particular Taste” and “Lost in Japan”, but otherwise focused on the refinement of the lyrics. and melodies adorning her tight guitar curls. For his efforts, he walked away with earworms like “In My Blood” and “If I Can’t Have You,” the Juno Award for Album of the Year, and a place in the Time 100 of 2018 with a dedication written by – who else? – John Mayer. Still, erased voices and pretty licks reigned. It is a formula which Wonder is here to destroy right away from the intro, which deploys a plinking piano figure as Shawn gives himself a quick pep talk: “You have a million different faces, but they’ll never get it unless you Let them in / You’ve been a million different places, so give yourself a chance to get lost in Wonderland. For the next 13 songs, that’s what he does. Wonder is Shawn Mendes’ headphone album, full of intriguing tones, lush textures and unexpected twists. They’re short and sweet, but they never feel like a chorus rush, like “Treat You Better” and “Mercy,” hit singles with chorus so massive that everything in between seems incidental, like free bread. before a hearty meal at a restaurant. You think “Song for No One” will remain a plaintive ballad until it blasts your headphones with a booming orchestral coda. “Call My Friends” pumps out fakes with a modest piano line, then slams the chorus out of the park with the kind of beefy synth, bass fuzz, and drums you’d find earlier on a twenty-one pilot record.

Wonder gets a lot of this variety from its players. Alongside Mendes and his longtime partner Scott Harris is Nate Mercereau, solo artist and session player for everyone from Lizzo to Logic, who joined Mendes’ braintrust on the eponymous album; Kid Harpoon, MVP of Harry Styles’ first two solo albums; and help from Canadian pop producer Tobias Jesso Jr., Anderson .Paak, Daniel Caesar and, if Mendes’ recent interview with Zane Lowe is true, a little Camilla Cabello. A murderer’s row of talents produces a varied and dynamic sound. Wonderthe tastes are vast. The magnificent vocal harmonies that cross the mix of “Dreams” are reminiscent of the Beach Boys. The highlight of “Song for No One” is uplifting Beatles fan service. (Put this before “Hey Jude” in a mix, trust.) The headbanger of a bridge on “Look Up at the Stars” has a palpable energy “Benny and the Jets”. “Piece of You” mingles with disco; the long-awaited Bieber duo “Monster” borders on the boom bap. “24 Hours” is the same kind of incredibly loud, painfully pretty song that Kanye West excelled at. This is the most interesting music Shawn Mendes has ever made. “Call My Friends” and “Always Been You” stand up against everything in its catalog.

Yet, as was the case with the Netflix doc, the man in the middle of the maelstrom feels like something of a mystery. It is difficult to get an idea of ​​the spirit that works behind “Teach Me To Love”, “Look at the Stars” and “I Can’t Imagine”. Pleasantly while the lyrics are being delivered – Shawn deserves props to improve himself as a singer – these three all come from one place where they deeply yearn for a lover and seem more interested in selling the universality of this. experience to the listener than to express it in a way unique to Mendes, to such an extent the accomplished performer that he collapsed in tears sitting in the stands of this arena of São Paulo at the idea of ​​missing one of the hundred shows planned for the year. This is the one time that her showbiz smile and thoughtful photoshoot gaze breaks through the entire Netflix document.

Shawn makes music for stadium spectators to blame him for, but the songs he writes about himself are always better than the loverboy pablum. ‘Monster,’ a song about the voyeuristic celebrity fandom and the glee with which we watch the people we’ve built fall down, goes a long way towards explaining why he’s keeping custody, though the sentiment seems truer on the star’s part. guest Justin Bieber, the hopeful and troubled T-800 to Mendes’ sleeker and more versatile T-1000. (“I was nine when ‘One Time’ came out,” Shawn told Lowe. “He was Elvis to me.”) “Piece of You” does a great job of getting around the cleanliness of the artist’s character. , adding a much needed dose of negativity to shatter all the joy as Mendes sings about the insecurities that come with having a beautiful girlfriend that other guys crave. “Call my friends” laments that you feel like your friends’ lives are passing you by; the sheer pain of benign niceties like zoning out on the smashed couch with friends almost makes him teary-eyed in a pandemic. If you came to Wonder to know what goes on behind brown doe eyes, under Superboy’s overly perfect veneer, you won’t get much closer to the story. But when the band sounds this good, you ask yourself, does it matter?