Shawn Mendes has kickstarted his new era of music with the release of ‘In My Blood’, his most personal offering yet.
In a snippet from a soon-to-be-released interview with Beats 1 on Apple Music, the Canadian singer spoke to Zane Lowe about how his battle with anxiety inspired the raw yet rousing anthem
“It was kind of something that hit me within the last year. Before that, growing up, I was a pretty calm kid, super steady,” Shawn said. “I knew people who had suffered from anxiety and found it kind of hard to understand, but then when it hits you, you’re like, ‘oh my God, what is this? This is crazy.’ That song is complete truth and the best thing about it is, it’s not all down, you know? The whole reason I wrote this song was to be like, at the end, ‘it’s not in my blood to do that.’”
Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in, sometimes I feel like giving up
No medicine is strong enough, someone help me
I’m crawling in my skin, sometimes I feel like giving up
But I just can’t, it isn’t in my blood
Noting the intensity of the song, Shawn added: “That’s why every time I play that song for someone, I go, ‘just so you know, I’m okay. Don’t worry about me, I promise, I’m okay.’ But I walked in and I was like, the only way we’re going to step up — regardless of my singing or the ways the melodies are or production — the only way things are going to get better is if it’s more honest. You know what I mean? And that’s why I started with the whole, ‘laying on the bathroom floor.’ Like, how raw can we get? And let’s work back from there.”
Co-written with Scott Harris and Geoff Warburton and co-produced with Teddy Geiger, ‘In My Blood’ is the first single from Shawn’s forthcoming third album, which is set to have a more rock-orientated sound.
Speaking to Zane, the singer said: “When we walked in, I was like, I want to make a Kings of Leon record and I want to go more rock stadium type of feel. We walked in the first day and we wrote, ‘In My Blood.’ That was the first song we wrote, which is the single.”
‘In My Blood’ is a powerful anthem which highlights Shawn’s incredibly mature sound. The track allows him to showcase his vulnerability in the verses whilst the driving chorus sees him fight back against his anxiety and insecurities. Whilst ‘In My Blood’ displays familiar elements of Shawn’s sound through the acoustic verses, the production in the chorus is much heavier thanks to the thumping drums and electrifying guitar.
Shawn has been teasing his new music all week and his fans couldn’t be more excited. First off, he changed his social media layout before tweeting a picture of a Spotify billboard which stated that new music was coming soon. He later tweeted an image with March 22 and March 23 on it.
Whilst ‘In My Blood’ was today’s gift, something else will be dropping tomorrow. Will it be the music video? Or maybe another song from #SM3? We’ll just have to wait and see. One thing’s for certain, we couldn’t be more excited about Shawn’s new music.