Author : Hughes Nelson
Image Credit :- Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Audacy
Canadian singer-songwriter Shawn Mendes has come a long way since he rose to fame with his covers of popular songs on Vine, becoming the third-youngest solo artist to achieve three number-one albums in Billboard’s Top 200 list. Over the years, he became the recipient of 13 SOCAN awards, 10 MTV Europe Music Awards, eight Juno Awards, eight iHeartRadio MMVAs, two American Music Awards, three nominations for a Grammy Award, and one nomination for a Brit Award.
As the artist recently celebrated his 25th birthday on August 8, below are enlisted some lesser-known facts about the singer that only his most loyal fans would be aware of:
- Mendes the Guitar Collector
Everyone knows that Shawn Mendes is a wizard when it comes to playing the guitar but what many might not know is that he has a knack for collecting them and started doing so a few years ago. In an interview in 2018, the singer confessed to having collected multiple guitars over the span of 3-4 years. He said, “How many guitars do I have? Way too many for how long I’ve been collecting guitars. I have like 35 or 40 guitars, which is a lot of guitars for like only three [or] four years of collecting.”
- Self-Taught Guitarist
One of the most impressive things about the “Stitches” singer is that he is a self-taught guitarist, who taught himself to play the instrument with the help of YouTube tutorials, through which he mastered the basics, at just the age of 13. With determination and practice, he became a master of the instrument and skilled enough to start writing and composing his own songs and posting them online, which consequently led to his big break on Vine. Mendes has been known for incorporating his guitar skills into his recordings and live performances.
- Vine History
Mendes paved the way for his success in the music industry through the short videos he began posting on Vine in 2013 that showcased his vocal and guitar skills. He soon began to gain a massive following of over 3.5 million followers, becoming one of the most popular and beloved users of the platform. His popularity on Vine soon caught the attention of record labels, and consequently landed him his first record deal and went on to become the chart-topping musician he is today.
- Leo the Lion
Shawn Mendes, in 2014, confessed that he has a stuffed toy lion that he carried around, and he had named it Leo. He said on a talk show, “I carry around this little Lion named Leo, which I’ve had for as long as I can remember,” and in 2016, he posted a tweet captioned, “Leo is the man,” which has been speculated to be a reference to his stuffed animal.
- History with Ed Sheeran
In an interview in 2014, after his single “Life of the Party” began topping the Billboard charts, Mendes reminisced about how Ed Sheeran has flown him out for dinner after the manager of the former, Andrew Gerter sent the latter videos of the young singer. Mendes said, “I feel like he was trying to help me be successful in the industry by giving me all this advice. He’s the most humble guy I’ve ever met. I forgot he’s my idol. I felt like I was in the room with one of my buddies.”
- High School Experience
In spite of being busy touring the US and making chart-topping hits since 2014, Shawn Mendes went on to acquire his high school diploma in 2016, thanks to online classes. He attended the Pine Ridge Secondary School in Toronto, and speaking about his school experience he said, “I really miss that whole experience of being in the classroom. And then also, all the sports teams, all the music events, the talent shows, the camps — and actually, they’ve let me go to the leadership camps, and I’ll be able to go to prom. So, it will be really awesome.”
He also opened up about being bullied in high school because of his Vine covers, and shared one such incident: “The day after I posted one of my first covers onto YouTube back in 2014, at school walking down the hall straight into a group of older guys yelling out ‘Sing for me Shawn sing for me!’ in a way that made me feel absolutely horrible… made me feel like a joke, like what I was doing was just stupid & wrong.”
- The Hollywood Dream
Mendes once admitted, “I want to produce and maybe write films one day. My biggest goal would be to produce and work on a movie concept and then also write the soundtrack to it.” He was greatly inspired by the soundtrack for 2007’s “Into the Wild” by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and said that he wanted to create something similar.
- Tomatoes? Nah!
Shawn Mendes absolutely detests tomatoes and has often expressed his dislike about the food item. In 2014 he tweeted, “Tomatoes ruin everything,” and when Camila Cabello posted a photo of a tomato in 2016, he replied with the tweet, “This is haunted Camila.”
- Tattoo List
Mendes got his first tattoo at the age of 17, which was that of an acoustic guitar on his right forearm. He has a total of about 7 tattoos, including a swallow bird on his right hand, a meditating person on his right wrist, a matching elephant tattoo he got with his mom on the inside of his left hand’s middle finger, a light bulb on the back of his right arm, the number eight on the inside of his left hand’s middle finger, and a butterfly on his right bicep.
Two other facts that most people might not be aware of about the singer are that he is fluent in both English and Portuguese and has even recorded a few songs in Portuguese, including a version of his hit song “In My Blood”, and he also has a massive fear of flying.
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