Music

The rise and rise of Shawn Mendes

Vine is great isn’t it? Cute dogs, pranksters and other random nonsense. But for Canadian teenager Shawn Mendes, it’s helped propel him in to the spotlight as a fully-fledged singing sensation

Shawn started singing in his bedroom covering bands and artists he loved, but he soon caught the attention of fans across the globe and is already being hyped as the new Bieber. We’re now all singing along to Stitches, his debut single, and expect a case of Mendes Fever (Mendesitis?) to be imminent. Here we look at the rise of the man himself.

giphy
What can you do in six seconds? If you’re feeling sluggish then probably not a lot, but Mendes ain’t having any of that – it all started with him posting covers of songs by Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran and One Direction on Vine, yet here he is with a couple of albums and world tours under his belt. Impressive, eh?

And he racks up an insane amount of loops whilst he’s at it – currently stood at 495 million loops and counting, all those six second snippets are adding up to a hefty amount of time he’s got us tuned in online.

Plus, he’s got an eye-wateringly enormous amount of streams on Spotify, too. And while we’re no Carol Vorderman, we did the sums and his top four songs on the streaming service add up to over a billion listens – that’s a lot of zeros, folks

tumblr_o11zgq4foo1um1eiio1_250

Back in to the real world, he’s got some friends in some pretty high places to help bolster his pop credentials. Taylor Swift loves him so much  that she personally asked him to open for a bunch of dates on her 1989 tour – and considering the tour saw an attendance of over 2,000,000 people, that’s a pretty big deal.

And Taylor also helped introduce him to Camila Cabello, whom he met backstage on the 1989 tour. They began jammin’ and now we’ve got a pretty good duet from it all. So, thanks for that Swifty!

shawn-camila-highfive-1448054187

Starting off in his bedroom singing six-second covers, he’s now packing his bags to bring us songs like I Know What You Did Last Summer and Treat You Better in massive arenas all over the world. There’s already a huge number so shows planned, with even more to be announced – oh Shawn you’re spoiling us.

Tickets for Shawn Mendes go on sale on Friday 16 September at 09:00. You can get your tickets at Ticketmaster.co.uk.