For someone who’s written such catchy, swoon-worthy hits as “Mercy” and “Treat You Better,” one might expect that Shawn Mendes would be a hot commodity on the dating scene. But despite his boyfriend-perfect lyrics (“I know I can treat you better / Than he can / And any girl like you deserves a gentleman”), Mendes is still single — as far as the press is concerned, anyway.
The 20-year-old singer-songwriter, who burst onto the scene with 2014’s Life of the Party, has never had a high-profile romance since he first started making a name for himself in the industry, though he has been linked to former Fifth Harmony singer Camila Cabello and Justin Bieber’s wifey, Hailey Baldwin. And this, Mendes told Rolling Stone back in November, is largely because he bad at dating, not for lack of options.
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“Dude, I have no game,” he said in the cover story, to which his father, Manny Mendes, pointed out that he didn’t have game when he was younger either, though the Mendes family’s good genes help compensate for that fact.
“There’s less we have to do because of the good hair,” Shawn said, agreeing with his father. “We’re already 10 steps ahead. But being good-looking doesn’t make you have game.” To this, his head of marketing interjected: “All Shawn has to do is open up his Instagram DMs, see all the blue check marks and choose. But it doesn’t happen often.”
Earlier in the year, an interview with Variety included that a big part of the reason why Mendes hasn’t been dating is that he doesn’t want to rush the process or force a relationship to happen just for the sake of being in one.
“I’m not currently dating anyone, but it’s not because I don’t have time — I don’t know if I’d be dating anyone if I was home in Pickering, either,” the Canadian native said. “It hasn’t stumbled across me, and I’m not chasing it. Of course, seeing all those other artists and people in relationships, you think, ‘Maybe it would be nice; who would be great for me?’ And that’s when you realize: ‘This is wrong. Let it be. I’m not supposed to be with anyone right now.’”
Last May, he and Baldwin walked the Met Gala red carpet together, sparking rumors that the pair were more than friends. One month later, however, Baldwin was engaged to Bieber, and Mendes was seemingly left in the dust, a fact that he sort-of copped to in his Rolling Stone interview.
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“I don’t even wanna put a title on it,” he said. “I think it was more of a zone of limbo.”
Come Sunday night, then, Mendes is unlikely to have a romantic partner on his arm, though rumor has it that he’ll be pairing up with Miley Cyrus for a special tribute to Dolly Parton, making the night conducive to just the kind of partnership Mendes is interested in right now: the creative kind.