Shawn Mendes is a Canadian singer-songwriter who started gaining traction in 2013 when he started to post covers onto a six-second video sharing site called Vine. This resulted in him gaining a few hits in his home country of Canada with Life of the Party and Something Big in 2014. His worldwide breakthrough came in 2015 with his song Stitches which went platinum in twelve countries and topping the UK and Scottish Official Charts. He also collaborated with Fifth Harmony's Camila Cabello on I Know What You Did Last Summer and released it on a revisited version of his debut full-length album, Handwritten. Despite quite liking that latter song, I still had pretty low expectations going into his new album Illuminate. This is mainly because his lead single Treat You Better was grading, obnoxious pop at its worst. Did Shawn Mendes surprise me?Well, no. Quite simply not. Illuminate is an example of an album that struggles to gain and maintain any serious momentum or anything interesting to keep my interest for twelve tracks. His delivery is not mature or old enough to make Treat You Better or Mercy even slightly convincing, the latter being saved by being one of the only places in the album where the album has any momentum courtesy of the backing choir, and the attitudes on display on Ruin or Treat You Better push this album close to pure awful for me.
Take the opener, Ruin for instance. A song where Mendes tells his girl that he is 'not trying to ruin her happiness', but he follows that statement a line later with ' but you know I'm the only one for ya'. He appears completely unwilling to put the situation in the girl's hand and allow her to make a decision. This attitude is certainly comparable to his attitude on Treat You Better where he attempts to insist that he is better for this girl than her current boyfriend, but gives very little in the way of evidence to back up his point. The fact that he describes himself as gentlemanly on this track further cements its position as the worst song here.
Three Empty Words isn't that much better, though. Mendes appears to think that not telling his girlfriend that he loves her is going to improve the relationship. If you are going to that sort of extreme to try and make something of your relationship, you might as well end it all. The hook on No Promises might be slightly more tolerable musically, but it still has some problems. Mendes again insists on making decisions without seemingly thinking them over as he says that he and his girl should not make promises because they are unlikely to keep them. He appears completely unprepared to take any risk or anything beyond the safest, least interesting relationship Mendes could have possibly brought up in his song.
Lost potential is littered all throughout this album. Honest is a great example. It could have been a decent song if Mendes had framed it properly. The song describes how Mendes feels he is unable to maintain a solid relationship with this girl. Sounds innocent enough on paper, but the framing says otherwise. The song implies a real lack of effort on Mendes' end to even try to understand what he needs to do to be able to supply the girl with what she needs. It screams of laziness.
On Don't Be A Fool Mendes and his writers make another mistake in framing and he ends his relationship with his girl even though he is still in love. However much it does say in the song that this is because he doesn't have time, it also doesn't demonstrate that Mendes has put any effort into trying to find time. If he really was in love, you'd think that he would at least put the smallest amount of effort into trying to find some time for his girl. Again, Laziness.
Patience might have a pleasant, steady instrumental, but like so much of this album, it's the subject matter that frustrates me. I understand Mendes' frustration on this track as he attempts to deal with an on one day, off the other kind of relationship, but instead of singing about how he is losing his patience, why not just sit and talk it out? Why not just express your feelings to the girl in question. That would be the more mature, sensical thing to do.
On Like This, Mendes eloquently describes his girl as 'not drop dead gorgeous'. I have no idea how I'm supposed to root for this guy at all. The closing track Understand is interrupted half way through with a spoken word monologue which does not serve any purpose at all and is just seemingly there to add to the five minute running time, but I can at least get behind the themes on this song Mendes discusses how he doesn't want fame to change who he is deep down. If the song didn't drag on for so long, he could have made something of that message. Also, if Mendes does 'really want to understand', you'd think he'd put in some more effort to communicate his issues with his girl. The Treat You Better like attitudes resurface on Bad Reputation, which for me is the point where this album just becomes pure awful. Mendes insists that he could be the one who can 'treat her like a lady'. If I was the girl in this case, I would start backing away slowly because at not one point on this album has Mendes given the smallest amount of evidence supporting his point. It's infuriating.
However, after everything I've said about this album, there are a few songs that did stick for me. Lights On is pretty cute with Mendes saying that he wants to love his girl with the lights on, as oppose to turning the lights out and not being able to properly see every inch of her. Pretty cute I suppose. Mercy is easily the best song on the album by playing a thicker instrumental over Mendes' voice and supporting it with a strong backing choir; I would argue it works very well. The backing vocals more than make up for Medes' lack of presence. I like the lyrics here too. Mendes seems prepared to do anything for his girl, and the punchier instrumentation sells the song: I really like this.
If only the instrumentation on the entirety of this album was up to this level. For a majority of this album, the production is minimalist and incredibly filmsy. On top of that, the guitars are weak and unable to pick up anything close to texture and presence in the mix. The worst example of instrumentation is probably on Ruin. The stomping percussion is so frustratingly slow,
In conclusion, stay away from this album. It's not good. I wouldn't even recommend this album to anyone looking for solid background music like this album is trying to be. Mainly because the attitudes are so infuriating, I can't help but get frustrated wherever I'm listening to it. For me, it's 1.5 / 5 and no recommendation. Avoid this album.
Favourite Tracks: Mercy
Least Favourite Tracks: Treat You Better, Bad Reputation, Ruin
Overall Rating: 1.5 / 5
Try It Out:
No comments:
Post a Comment