Shawn Mendes - Shawn Mendes

The Guardian 60

(Island)

It is the law that every teen pop star eventually undergoes a very public sexual awakening, whether that be Britney cavorting with a snake or Justins Timberlake and Bieber respectively embracing debauchery and delinquency.

The persona of every solo One Direction member can be summed up as: “Yes, I have sex now.” Even Taylor Swift has abandoned her good-girl persona for leather and frenzied gasps. And so it goes for 19-year-old Shawn Mendes, a cherubic Canadian pop star who’s occasionally seemed less like an autonomous artist than a hard factory-reset Justin Bieber, or his primary influence, infamous lothario John Mayer.

Pitchfork 51

On his third album, the former Vine star grows into a persona that’s playful, gently libidinous, and safely menace-free, but his music too often falls on the wrong side of beige.