UNCONVENTIONAL: Mendes started getting fans after posting an acoustic cover of a Bieber song on Vine.
By Geoffery Rowlands
The next Justin Bieber. This is how numerous music critics have described 17-year-old Canadian singer/songwriter Shawn Mendes.
The comparisons are obvious. They have a shared nationality, were discovered through online videos and released their first material when they were just 15. They also have an enormous fan following comprised almost entirely of teenage girls.
While Justin, 21, metamorphosed into a tattooed bad boy, though hopefully now a reformed character, Shawn remains the kind of clean-cut young man that any mother would love to see dating her daughter. It must help to have a solid and loving family background.
“My family are so special,” Shawn smiled. “They have given me total support in everything I’ve ever wanted to do. They are always there to help and guide me. I can’t describe how much they mean to me.”
His parents are not musical. They cannot sing or play an instrument. Neither could Shawn until he decided to learn the guitar. This was less than four years ago.
“I didn’t have any great masterplan about becoming a pop star. It was just that I’d always loved listening to music and I wanted to see if I could play guitar.
“I didn’t take any formal lessons. I learned from instruction videos on YouTube. I’d type in things like ‘How to play beginner songs on guitar’ and took it from there. Train’s Hey, Soul Sister was one of the first songs I learned. I taught myself some chords and slowly got the hang of things.
“It pretty quickly turned into an obsession. As I gradually got better, I wanted to improve that much more. I’d play for hours always thinking I wasn’t good enough. The same is still true to a large extent, I’m always trying to become a better musician.”
It was a similar story for Shawn’s singing.
“You couldn’t have picked me out as a potential pop star. It was only as my singing improved that I came to realise just how bad I was when I made my first postings online.
“I did know my voice wasn’t great so I managed to figure out what sounded right and what didn’t. Like with the guitar, I wanted to become a better singer. I’m still anything but the best in the world. I haven’t had any vocal training but I’ve discovered what works for me.”
Shawn initially found a following through his postings on Vine.
“It was August, 2012, when I uploaded a clip of myself performing an acoustic version of Justin Bieber’s As Long As You Love Me. I didn’t expect anything to come of it. You can’t exactly do much of a song in the six and a half seconds allowed by Vine. It was just something I did for fun.
“I checked my account the following day and found it had 10,000 likes. I seriously couldn’t believe it. I actually thought something must have gone wrong with the website. But it was real okay, my likes and followers increased with each new clip I posted. I realised nobody else was using Vine in this way and I’d hit on a unique formula.
“But I wanted to give my followers full songs instead of short clips so I began posting my stuff on YouTube. About 15 months after my first post on Vine, Andrew Gertler, who is now my manager, saw one of my YouTube videos. He passed it on to the people at Island Records. They flew my dad and I to New York where I signed my record deal.”
Shawn’s first single, Life of the Party, entered Billboard’s Hot 100 at number 24 in July, 2014. He became the youngest artist in Billboard chart history to debut in the top 25 with their first single. A month later, “The Shawn Mendes EP” debuted at number five on the Billboard 200.
“I couldn’t believe the start I’d had to my career. The Vamps asked me to do a guest vocal on their song, Oh Cecilia (Breaking My Heart), and that went top ten in Britain. Then came the reality check. My next single, Something Big, only made number 80 on the Hot 100.”
This track still reached number 11 in the Toronto-native’s home country and earned Shawn another Music Canada platinum disc.
He has now returned to the Hot 100 heights with his latest single, Stitches. This follows the Billboard 200 chart-topping success of his debut album, “Handwritten.”
“I’m so proud of the album. I wrote or co-wrote nine of the 12 tracks on the basic album and all of the deluxe edition bonus songs. I’m enormously grateful to my fans for all their support.”
Shawn hopes his fans will stay with him throughout what he would like to be a long career.
“I don’t want to just be a teen star. I know longevity is difficult to achieve for most artists in the pop business, particularly when you start as a teenager. But I love performing my songs to appreciative audiences and it would be awesome if I could do this for many years to come.”
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The Beatles
Beatles fans may well have all of the band’s songs but what about their videos?
The concept of music videos is generally regarded as stemming from the birth of MTV in 1981. Although numerous artists had made song videos during the 1970s, the idea of a specially filmed performance or some kind of mini movie to promote a song dates back almost to the dawn of the rock era.
The Beatles were heavily involved in using promotional films. Some 50 of these are to be released on a standalone DVD/Blu-ray edition of “1+,” an expanded re-release of their 2000 compilation album, “1.”
The video content also accompanies the re-released CD which now features new stereo, 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS HD surround audio mixes. The deluxe edition also includes an illustrated 124-page hardback book by music journalist Mark Ellen and music historian Richard Havers. All packages are set for release on November 6.
A trailer for the superbly restored video content can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-h9qvPrTeE
Chvrches
Chvrches have teased fans with concert performances of some unfinished new songs during the last year or so. But the Scottish indie-pop trio have now revealed all of the new material with the release of their second album, “Every Open Eye.”
Lead single, Leave a Trace, is the first of numerous songs posted at (no www.) soundcloud.com/chvrches
But the entire album is currently being streamed at www.npr.org/2015/09/20/439491238/first-listen-chvrches-every-open-eye
It is one of several albums by various artists which can be heard via the www.npr.org/music website. Be quick though, the albums on npr tend not to be available for more than a few days.
If you enjoy their music, the trio’s debut album, “The Bones of What You Believe,” is posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mTRvJ9fugM&list=PLqhNzBA9MSSpXGYRMGvkQ2AgW13H3FCnS
The Happy Mondays
It is eight years since The Happy Mondays issued their last album of new material. Their fans are unconcerned though, “Uncle Dysfunktional” was released 15 years after the band’s previous album, “Yes Please!”
Three years have passed since the announcement that they were writing new songs. But while numerous concerts have been performed, there is still no sign of a new album.
There is, however, a new song which was written under unusual circumstances. A British television company asked the band to spend some time with the Embera Drua tribe in Panama for a reality show, Singing In The Rainforest. The idea was they should write a song while there and perform it with the Embera people.
The end result was Ooo La La To Panama. Credited to Happy Mondays & Embera, the official video is posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBiXQwL3Sxc
All proceeds from the song will be donated to the Embera tribe. brief
