Heartthrob, Shawn Mendes is back with his brand new album Wonder. His new album is about a love concept and the concept is Camila Cabello, it’s basically a love album about his relationship and how cloud 9 he is on. “Just isn’t fair what you put in the air/I don’t wanna share,” Mendes notes. The whirring synths layered over album opener “Intro” even recall the android hum of Cabello’s signature classic “Never Be the Same.” Mendes goes from the date-night elation of “Higher” to “24 Hours,” a prayerful ode to putting down roots (“Sign the check, and the place is ours/It’s a little soon, but I wanna come home to you”), to the string-bathed R&B sexcapade “Teach Me How to Love.”
Musically speaking on this album is different and more light and romantic compared to light choruses into big crescendos in his past albums with songs such as “There’s Nothing Holding Me Back” and “In My Blood.” This album is more about a realty beyond black and white, the dreamy, over fantasized thought of what life could and should be like but really it isn’t. This is what that album speaks and is about.
Co-writing every song on the album, Mendes shows his feelings of hope and heartbreak. There’s a genuine ache in the feverish “Dreams,” which he sings about rushing home so he can get his head on his pillow and connect with the astral plane: “You’re asleep in London…. Count back from one hundred.” On “Call My Friends,” she’s back home and he’s on the road wandering through fame like a zombie for people to get high with: “I need a vacation from my mind,” he sings.
What emerges is a compelling mix of youthful passion and coming-of-age agony. Mendes closes with “Can’t Imagine,” a solo acoustic song where he makes life without his queen sound like a scorched-earth hellscape. Wonder makes you hope he never has to live it.
Stream Wonder now!