There's nothing hold Shawn Mendes back.
The 19-year-old singer-songwriter has just released "In My Blood," the first single from his forthcoming third studio album, which doesn't have a release date or title. It's his first new music since 2017's "There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back," the only single from his re-released sophomore album, Illuminate. (That track peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.)
Before he dropped "In My Blood," Mendes shared his excitement with fans in a note, posting it on social media. "I know I've been pretty quiet during this album process and I just wanted to thank you with all of my heart for being there and supporting me the entire time," Mendes wrote. "This song is the closest song to my heart that I've ever written and I hope you guys love it and all the new music coming your way. I love and appreciate you all so much!!! Thank you!"
To no one's surprise, fans are already going wild for the track:
Mendes co-produced the song with Teddy Geiger and co-wrote it with Scott Harris and Geoff Warburton. He will debut the track on TV March 28 on CBS' The Late Show With James Corden.
Little else is known about Mendes' album, but producer and songwriter Ryan Tedder did drop a few clues Wednesday during an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music's Beats 1. "I've done somewhere between, I don't know, five or six songs with him," he said. "For fear of death, I can't comment on the album at all, but I will say that it is the coolest. It's going to be amazing."
Calling Mendes "classic," "lovely" and "timeless," Tedder said, "We banged out three songs in like a day. A few weeks later, his team asked if I would want to take a greater role in his album."
The teen sensation and Tedder "hit it off" right away, he said. "I told his team my goal for that guy is stadiums—and I think he's going to do it. And this album, I believe, will do it. I'm almost weird about it, because the songs are so good. I don't even want to really talk about it enough to say that it is great, it is authentic, it is new, it is different, it is cool, it is edgy. It is everything."
The pop singer phoned in to the U.K.'s 96-106 Capital FM Friday to promote his rockin' new single. "It's funny. I've been playing it for a lot of people, and everyone's like, 'Wow, this is so not what we expected.' And I'm like, 'Really? I had no idea. I thought this is what people would have expected.' But it's raw. I kind of go there on the electric guitar zone and push myself," Mendes explained. "It's probably the deepest song I've wrote thus far—it's super vulnerable."
Mendes appeared on Lowe's show Thursday morning, where he filled in more of the blanks. "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." Lowe pointed out that the song is more "intense" than his previous material, which Mendes completely understood. "That's why every time I play that song for someone, I go, 'Just so you know, I'm OK. Don't worry about me. I promise, I'm OK,'" Mendes explained. "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? That's why I started with the whole, 'laying on the bathroom floor.' Like, 'How raw can we get? Let's work back from there.'"
Mendes hopes fans will relate to the more mature themes that "In My Blood" explores. "It was something that hit me within the last year. Before that, growing up, I was a pretty calm kid, super steady. 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,'" he said. "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.'"