The Canadian singer reveals that the song was written after a bomb was detonated at Ariana Grande's concert in Manchester.
- May 4, 2018
AceShowbiz - Shawn Mendes has given fans another taste of his forthcoming album. Teaming up with Khalid, he released a collaborative track entitled "Youth" on Thursday, May 3. The track was first premiered on Apple Music's Beats 1.
The song begins with the musician duo trading lyrics over an acoustic guitar. When the song hits its chorus, kick-drum thump starts playing as Shawn and Khalid harmonize their vocals. "You can't take my youth away/ This soul of mine will never break," they sing. "As long as I wake up today/ You can't take my youth away."
"Youth" is the third single off his self-titled album, which is due for a May 25 release via Island Records. It follows "In My Blood" and "Lost in Japan". In an interview with Zane Lowe of Beats 1, the Canadian singer revealed that he wrote the song after a bomb was detonated at Ariana Grande's concert in Manchester.
Saying that he immediately text Khalid after the incident, he added, "When I text him, I said, 'When we get together, we have to make a statement. We have to move. We have to write about what's going on in life and how the youth is feeling because I think we have the voice to do that.' "
He then went on recalling that he immediately met up with his singer friend on the same day. "I was like, 'This is what we have to write about.' And it was awesome," the 19-year-old heartthrob added. "I'm really, really proud of this song."
However, Shawn admitted that writing the said track was hard. "It's so easy to sit at a piano and talk about being in love or heartbreak or something," he confessed to the radio DJ. "But the hardest thing in the world is to sit at a piano and talk about what the world is going through, and heartbreak, in a different light."
