I’ve been a Shawn Mendes fan for a long time. I--with only slight embarrassment--am happy to admit to it. See, way back in 2015 his first album came on my Spotify, and I was JAMMING to “Life of the Party”, “Aftertaste”, and “Stitches.” This was before he blew up and became a teen heartthrob and things got weird for me personally, because like being a thirty-year-old man listening to a 17-year-old hearthrob’s JAMS made me feel weird. Also, being at a party and saying “Put on Shawn Mendes!” In 2015 was quite the opposite of cool.
Anyway, because of this early introduction, I’ve been a fan a long time and have supported Shawny through a lot. (The Wonder era, anyone? Anyone?) But my love of Shawn has also been cursed. Legitimately. As you’ll see, I put something into the universe that means anytime I do something remotely Shawn associated, it ends very poorly.
Curse Moment #1: The Tour
This story is important, because it’s also when I pulled two of my other friends into being Shawn fans. One because she liked the music, and the other because he didn’t mind a hot man playing a guitar (Shawn was in his 20s at this point, so the problematicity was much less).
Anyway, in like 2018 tickets went on sale for Shawn’s world tour. I got an email in April for a June show, and I was like “Yes! Let’s go to Shawn Mendes! I hope he plays ‘Life of the Party’!”
I bought tickets thinking the show was 2 months away, only to get the confirmation email and discover THE SHOW WAS IN 2019. LIKE IT WAS 14 MONTHS AWAY.
I knew this was a bad omen, because…who knows what they are going to be doing in 14 months? But I committed. I recruited my two friends to go, and we waited the 13 months to attend.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, I had a work trip scheduled the exact week of the concert. I couldn’t tell my boss, “So, I can’t do this important training because I have Shawn Mendes tickets”, so I had to give my ticket to another friend.
I really think this was the genesis of the curse because I forsook Shawn for a new hire orientation training in San Francisco which was definitely not “Life of the Party” behavior. The music gods must have seen this as blasphemous and cursed all future Shawn events.
Curse Moment #2: The Netflix Livestream
Flashforward two years and Shawn is preparing for an album release. At this point my two friends’ and my love for Shawn had taken an ironic turn. We did like him, but it was also now kind of funny that we planned major events around Shawn Mendes. My fandom had also fallen off when his self-titled 3rd album came out. Not that it was bad or anything, but it just didn’t have the angsty gusto of “Life of the Party”. [Guys, I really love “Life of the Party”.]
But it was a big Shawn moment, so my friends and I (during the pandemic), gathered together, made some food, drank some drinks, and prepared for the Shawn livestream.
And we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
About forty minutes into the livestream, Shawn came onscreen and is like “Oh! I had to shower! Let’s get this going.”
Which…okay…like I know Shawn was the Life of the Party, but if you have a scheduled livestream…be on time? It was the pandemic, what else were you doing, Shawn?
But also, deep inside, I was like “Is this my fault? I’m watching, maybe something happened because I forsook Shawn in 2019. Was there a mysterious, dubious plumbing issue?”
My friends and I watched the livestream, which, top to bottom, was twenty-five minutes long. We then sat back and questioned our fandom. We literally were feeling like girlfriends of the guy who texts at 1 am “U up?” – I mean, if Shawn schedules a livestream, shows up for 40 minutes late, then plays for 15 minutes… you don’t feel that fan value, you know? Kind of felt like he gave us stitches.
Curse Moment #3: Tour 2
When I bought tickets to his next world tour, I was pretty sure things weren’t going to work out. I didn’t blame myself for the anxiety that caused Shawn to cancel 50 shows, but part of me did Wonder (Shawn pawn intended) if I had something to do with it. THE CURSE!
Curse Moment #4: The Concert Movie Film
Which brings us to today. In October, my friend messaged me and our other Shawn friend and asked if we wanted to see his concert movie before his new album release. At this point, I fully knew something was going to happen. The Shawn Curse had been on me for years, and I expected there to be some problem.
First, a side, Shawn tangent: We got together before the movie for dinner, and never have I ever had so many people engage me about what movie I’m going to see.
Our waiter: “Going to a movie! What are you going to see?”
And, I’ll be honest, not much has changed since 2015, and, if anything, being a Shawn Mendes fan is worse as a 40-year-old man than a 30-year-old man, but we still had to tell the waiter that we were going to see the Shawn Mendes movie.
He literally had no response. He was just like “Oh, okay!” And looked at us (maybe a little pityingly?) and then took away our cheese curd basket.
THEN, we get to the movie theater and the guy taking tickets said, out loud, as if projecting for the whole theater to hear: “THREE FOR SHAWN MENDES!”
I have never had a ticket taker say the name of the movie. Never. We immediately all turned red and were like, “HAHA! Yes, going to Shawn Mendes!”
Anyway, the reason all two of you are reading this: THE CURSE!
Well, you will not be surprised to hear that the movie screening was a disaster. It was supposed to start at 7 and at 7:25 a riot was burbling in the audience. It was largely a collection of millennial women and middle-aged gay men (Did not expect there to be a “type” of us gays that love Shawn).
But, we were talking about what to do, and we decided that we really couldn’t go ask for help. Can you imagine?
Ticket man on his walkie talkie: “Hi! Yes, we have an angry middle-aged gay man complaining because the Shawn Mendes movie isn’t starting.”
It wasn’t worth the risk.
A 19-year-old projectionist did come in (poor girl) and try to explain what was going on after a 30-minute delay. She hadn’t had much coaching in public speaking, because her explanation was something like: “Hi, yeah. My coworker can’t figure it out. But we’re trying. And we may have it going. Or not. I’ll like see if we can get it working. I may come back in. Or not. It may start though. But it may not start.”
She left and my buddy goes, “What in the word salad was that? Does anyone know anything more now?”
This really brought the audience together, because at this point, we were all wondering what we were doing with our lives, waiting 40 minutes in a theater for a Shawn Mendes movie to start.
The movie did flicker on in the next 2 minutes. Not at the beginning, of course, but somewhere in the middle. Eventually, the lights dimmed and we got to watch about 40 minutes of the 90-minute movie.
The movie itself was kind of odd. Editing wasn’t really a thing, so we literally just watched a small show (guitar changes and set reshuffles included). There was an awkward toast for Shawn’s birthday, and then it ended with him humming along with this weird box instrument (a harmonium). It was supposed to be a poignant moment about him finding his voice again, but it was a quarter of the 40-minute edit we saw, so you can imagine how thrilled we were that a concert movie had so few songs and heavily featured a honking box. (I figured out why the goose box was so pivotal the next morning. I listened to the full, new album and discovered that it was 12 songs and 35 minutes long. Honking music box is a great filler if you only have 30 minutes of content.)
When we left the theater, I took the blame.
“It’s the curse! I can’t do anything Shawn related without it ending in disaster!”
My friends were forgiving, but for the greater good, I may have to abandon my Shawn fandom. Honestly, his recent chart failures have probably been my fault. I’ll also take the L for his break up with Camila.
The only thing I’ll keep is “Life of the Party” – man, that song’s good. The curse will have to pry that song out of my cold, dead hands. Or just make me listen to it on the goose box.