Shawn Mendes Opens Up and Bares…Some

From the very beginning of his fifth album Shawn, Shawn Mendes makes it clear he still doesn’t know who he is. Opening track “Who I Am” is riddled with the anxiety and disillusionment of a quarter-life crisis: “Got a lot of talk in my brain right now…Everything’s hard to explain out loud,” he sings in the first verse. On Shawn, he tries his best to detail everything that’s happened in the last two years since he abruptly canceled his Wonder world tour and watched the unraveling of his relationship with Camila Cabello become a public spectacle.

His journey of self-exploration leads him to a folkier sound than ever before: Mendes strips away his radio pop penchant for a more rootsy, Americana-infused sound. For the most part, it works for him; the John Mayer acolyte takes to this form of barefoot introspection like a fish to water and is at his most powerful when he pairs it with the truly honest storytelling. On “Why Why Why” he bares all about an experience of nearly becoming a dad while on album standout “Heart of Gold,” he opens up about missing a funeral for someone in his ex-lover’s family when they likely needed him the most.

The album would be stronger, however, if Mendes let himself sit in the confusion with a little more stillness. He makes the mistake of being too restless to be fully realized; his lyrical attempts at proving that he’s come out on the other side of this experience lead him to half-baked cliches and weak affirmations, as heard on forgettable, cheesy moments like “The Mountain” and “Rollin’ Right Along.” The most cliché of all is a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” an unnecessary and over-done cover that adds little to the story of the song or even Mendes’ own journey.

As a teen idol-turned-young man grappling with heartbreak, there’s still clearly plenty of emotional reckoning that Mandes should let himself parse. At the album’s best, he proves he’s at his best when he embraces the uncertainty.