Shawn Mendes is opening up about how uncertainty in his life fuelled the release of his new song, “What The Hell Are We Dying For?”
“I think I am approaching 25 still feeling quite confused about a lot of things in my life. And I think [the song] was expressing that feeling of frustration about what is happening, this feeling of swinging the pendulum back and forth,” Mendes told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 about the powerful track released amid the Canadian wildfires.
“I think I still am in a very confused place, but I know that there are some people in my life who I deeply love, and I know that music is something I deeply love, and I know that this planet is something I deeply love,” he continued. “And all of those three things are something worth fighting for and worth dying for.”
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While diving deeper into the struggles he’s been dealing with musically, Mendes revealed that “over the last year and a bit,” he’s “been really struggling in the studio to find my voice… and to even have the courage to be in the room with writers or step into the booth and sing.”
He noted that he was in upstate New York when he wrote the song, “and just on the back end of feeling a lot of things about relationships, about my career, about environment.
“And I was in the studio and this moment of just deep frustration came over me and I finally started to feel this inspiration come… it felt like it was the first time I felt that in a year and a half… and the words came out of me just like, ‘what am I dying for?'” he recalled.
At the time, New York’s skyline was covered in orange haze due to the wildfires and was captured in a photograph to use for the cover art of the song, which also mentions the fires in its lyrics.
The songwriter explained why it was so important for him to release the track as soon as possible.
“I had this feeling of urgency, this feeling of honestly excitement, this feeling of connection, this feeling of this is me right now, this is how I feel right now,” he told Lowe, noting that he was in the studio for 25 hours straight to write, produce and mix the song before releasing it shortly after.
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As for how Mendes is feeling now, the singer admits he stills feels “a little confused about everything,” but he’s “happy” he “broke through that horrible wall of writer’s block.
“I’m just going to keep going, keep making some songs because I really think that there’s something in here.”
