Shawn Mendes Reveals He's Been 'Struggling' To Find Himself 'Musically'

Shawn Mendes returned to music last week but it didn't seem like he had planned on it. On Friday, June 9th, the singer shared a new single called "What the Hell Are We Dying For?" and revealed that he had released it within 24 hours of writing it with his friends. In a new interview, Mendes spoke about the track and revealed that he's been struggling to get his creative juices flowing since he took time off to prioritize his health in 2022.

“I feel like over the last year and a bit, I’ve just been really struggling in the studio to find my voice and to find myself musically and to even have the courage just to be in the room with writers or step into the booth and sing,” Mendes said per Billboard. “I was upstate New York and just on the back end of feeling a lot of things about relationships, about my career, about the environment. I was in the studio and this moment of just deep frustration came over me and I finally started to feel this inspiration come. Honestly, in that moment, it felt like it was the first time I felt that in a year and a half in the studio.”

Mendes went on to speak about his new song. "I think 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. […] I think we were up there in New York, the sky was orange, the air was thick and the words were flowing and this happened. In hindsight, it was scary. I woke up in the morning and I was like, “Wow, what did I do?” I think it was a good thing for me to do for myself. I had to dive into the deep end. Otherwise, I would’ve sat there for years questioning myself… and I think it wraps around to just, what is it that we care about in life? Who do we care about? What’s worth it? Why do we show up the way we do?”