As Shawn Mendes releases his new album, collaborator Julia Michaels says he “just wants to tell everybody where he's at in life”

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Island RecordsShawn Mendes releases his self-titled third album today, and critics are hailing it as the 19-year-old singer/songwriter’s most mature and honest work yet.  But Shawn didn’t create the album all by himself — he got some help from collaborators like John Mayer, Ed Sheeran, Ryan Tedder and Julia Michaels, who says working on the project was “amazing.”

“I mean, he just, he wants to tell everybody about what he’s going through and what he’s doing and where he’s at in life,” Julia tells ABC Radio. “And I’m just happy I get to be a part of that story.” 

Julia co-wrote two songs on the album: “Nervous” and “Like to Be You;” she also duets with him on the latter song.  In a “making-of” video, Shawn talks about his admiration for Julia’s “incredible” talents, calling her “this ball of emotion that is kind of uncontrollable.”

“She feels sadness and she feels happiness and she feels love and heartbreak all kind of at the same time,” he marvels.

As for his own feelings, they’re most evident on the album’s lead single, “In My Blood,” which is about his struggles with anxiety.

“That song’s definitely…the most important song off of the album,” Shawn explains in the “making of” video. “It’s my most vulnerable song….it was very hard at first to figure out how…to be super-raw with my emotions and to say it exactly how it was without making it feel too aggressive or too scary or whatever.”

He adds, “I realized in that day, while creating the song, that the best way to write music, for me personally, was to say exactly how I felt.”

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