Shawn Mendes began posting clips of himself performing acoustic versions of popular songs on Vine last year, starting with an amazing six-second cover of Justin Bieber’s “As Long as You Love Me.” The teen singer’s videos quickly spread across the internet, grabbing the interest of big names like Ed Sheeran, Nash Grier, and Mendes’ now-manager Andrew Gertler.
Gertler discovered the Canadian singer-songwriter after searching YouTube for covers of A Great Big World’s “Say Something.” During his search, Gertler stumbled across one of Mendes’ videos and immediately sent the clip to Ziggy Chareton, an A&R manager at Island Records.
“Island Records was the first record label to … acknowledge me,” said Mendes, who recently signed with the label. “After that, quickly Republic Records, and then Atlantic Records, Sony Records and Warner Bros. It was all the labels at once. It was absolutely insane like knowing that this many record labels were interested in me.”
Today, Mendes’ strong social media stardom is translating to the pop charts. His single “Life of the Party” debuted at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 earlier this month, selling a whopping 148,000 tracks. Even more impressive, the ballad stormed up to No. 1 on the iTunes chart within 90 minutes of release!
Although some people have likened Mendes to Justin Bieber, a Canadian teen who had a breakthrough on the Universal Music Group label, Chareton says Mendes’ sound will echo Ed Sheeran, John Mayer and OneRepublic.
“I take no offense to that because (Bieber) became extremely successful, but the one thing I will say about Shawn is you’re never going to see him onstage with 30 background dancers, pyrotechnics and records produced and having features from Nicki Minaj,” said Chareton. “I want this to be the complete antithesis of Austin Mahone. Even though he’s going on tour with him to kind of garner that same demographic and fan base, we want quality records.”
Shawn is currently on tour with Austin Mahone, The Vamps and Fifth Harmony, and will release his first, four-song EP The Shawn Mendes EP on July 28!
