Shawn Mendes Wonders ‘What the Hell Are We Dying For?’ on Surprise Single With Smoke-Shrouded Skyline Cover
Sometimes love can make your chest feel tight and your eyes run like a river. But if you’ve been outside anywhere on the East Coast this week it’s likely the acrid smoke from Canadian wildfires that is making it hard to breathe.
Shawn Mendes is definitely feeling it, because on Friday morning (June 9) the singer dropped a surprise single that seems to be inspired both by the smogpocalypse environmental disaster and a broken heart.
“Smoke in the air/ The city’s burning down,” Mendes sings in the opening lines of the midtempo track about what sounds like the end of an affair. “I wanna speak out but I don’t make a sound/ Locked in my mind/ You’re all I think about/ I wanna save us/ But I don’t know how.”
The Toronto-bred singer tweeted the origin story of the rush track on Thursday, writing, “Started writing this song yesterday morning with my friends in upstate Newyork & finished it only a few hours ago..felt so important to me to share with you guys in real time.” The tweet was accompanied by the single’s shocking cover image: the New York skyline obscured by a pea soup-thick orange haze, with the title barely observable in white amid the smoke clouds.
And while the end times vibe caused by the fires and smoke clearly affected Shawn, the song’s chorus hints at a loss that is more personal than environmental. “If we don’t love like we used to/ If we don’t care like we used to/ What the hell are we dying for?” he sings urgently over a chugging guitar riff. “If it doesn’t cut like it used to/ If you’re not mine and I’m not yours/ What the hell are we dying for?”
The singer also noted that he’s donating to the Canadian Red Cross to provide relief those impacted by the more than 400 wildfires affecting nine provinces and two territories up north.
Back in February, Mendes talked about why he postponed, then cancelled a planned 2022 North American/European tour to focus on his mental health.
See the cover image and Mendes’ message below.
Gil Kaufman
Billboard
