Juan Navarro/ Music ChoiceLast week, Shawn Mendes released two new, very different-sounding songs from his upcoming third album: the rock anthem “In My Blood” and the R&B-pop tune “Lost in Japan.” In a video interview for Music Choice, Shawn says “In My Blood” was born from a desire to make “the most honest, realest thing that I can talk about.”
“In My Blood” finds a vulnerable Shawn singing about “laying on the bathroom floor, feeling nothing,” trying to overcome anxiety. “I’m overwhelmed and insecure…Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in/Sometimes I feel like giving up,” he sings.
“My only thought was that if I’m gonna make new music, it has to be the most honest, the realest thing that I can kind of come up with, and the realest thing that I can talk about,” Shawn tells Music Choice about his goal for the new album. “The very first day in the studio in October…that was the first song we wrote.”
Shawn says the tune was inspired by the ballads he loved as a child, which would build to a big climax. “You felt like you watched a movie and you felt like you you got something so much more than just like three minutes of music out of it,” he said of those old songs. “And that was my goal.”
As for “Lost in Japan,” Shawn laughs, “It’s about a dream I had [about] getting lost in a country, and I think it’ll be the first song [of mine] that maybe gets played in a club, if I’m lucky!”
“Yeah I’m just very excited about it,” he adds. “Mainly excited because ‘In My Blood’ is the polar opposite of it.”
Shawn’s new album will be out in the next few months.
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