Canadian singer-songwriter Shawn Peter Raul Mendes, 17, was born in August 1998 in Toronto, Ontario. Hailed as a teen superstar, Mendes first attracted interest in 2013, when he took to video sharing app Vine to share his covers of popular songs and became known for his six-second snippets of such tunes. By doing so, he caught the attention of Andrew Gertler, an artist manager, as well as that of Ziggy Chareton of Island Records. Mendes signed a deal with the record label and the rest, as they say, is history.
His first release under his new record label was the single Life of the Party, which gained international recognition and made him the youngest artist to make it into the top 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 with a debut song. Mendes – whose current album, Handwritten, has recently been released – cites singers Ed Sheeran and John Mayer as his main musical influences. He has also headlined a solo tour.
Previously in the gossip headlines as a result of a rumoured romance between himself and Fifth Harmony’s Camila Cabello, 18, Mendes has legions of teen girls fans across the country and beyond, and even a new friend in Justin Bieber. He and Bieber were said to be on poor terms when Bieber admitted he did not known who Mendes was following his cover of one of Bieber’s most popular songs, What Do You Mean? However, Bieber took to social networking site Twitter soon afterwards to tell Mendes: “Shawn I checked out the music and I’m so proud! So glad to see another boy from Canada crushin it. #canadiansdoitbetter.”
