Shawn Mendes review, 02 Arena London: Singer’s talent is less alluring than his supreme self-confidence

The most remarkable thing about the show is how much the audience hangs on the 20-year-old’s every word

Shawn Mendes playing the 02 Arena in London (Josiah Van Dien)

In a recent interview, Canadian pop sensation Shawn Mendes was asked if he believes his own hype. “Of course,” he said. “You have to. If you wake up every day and say, ‘I’m OK,’ you’re going to just be that. If you wake up every day and look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I’m great, let’s go sell out that stadium,’ then you will.”

I’m not sure just anyone could will themselves onstage at the O2 Arena, as Mendes has done, but perhaps he’s partly right. After all, the most remarkable thing about Tuesday night’s show is not the 20-year-old’s performance, proficient though it is, but how his audience hangs on his every word, note and over-sung trill. Mendes’s talent is less alluring than his supreme self-confidence, his unwavering belief that he deserves to be here – and that we are lucky to be witnessing him.

The singer, who rose to prominence in 2013 by posting song covers on Vine before being signed to Island Records a year later, arrives on stage in a blue silk shirt with an over-sized collar. There is a strange whiff of the Seventies about him, even down to his glam-rock stance. Clutching a mint-blue guitar, bouncing on the balls of his feet, he launches into the unremitting pop-rock anthem “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back”. Why the second missing ‘g’ and not the first? We may never know.

“Stitches” soon follows, on which Mendes’s impressive falsetto distracts from the disturbing emotional blackmail at the song’s core. “You watch me bleed until I can’t breathe, shaking / Falling onto my knees,” he sings, running his hands through his hair. “And now that I’m without your kisses / I’ll be needing stitches.” Yikes. On “Bad Reputation”, sadly not a cover of the 1980 Joan Jett song, Mendes posits himself as a sort of Jesus Christ to his love interest’s Mary Magdalene. “And all of my friends seen her naked / Or so the story goes / Mistakes we all make them / But they won’t, let it go, oh no / ‘Cause she’s got a bad reputation / But I know what they don’t.” As he sings, dry ice fills the stage and white lights strobe.

A huge white rose hangs down over the middle of the crowd. It is beneath this flower that Mendes reappears, after a brief absence, now wearing a tank top to expose his carefully crafted physique. It’s all very Freddie Mercury.

A multi-instrumentalist, Mendes flits between acoustic guitar, electric guitar and piano. He seems at home with all of them, but it’s his voice that stands out above it all. When he holds back and resists the distracting vocal runs, as he does on sincere guitar ballad “Never Be Alone”, it is as silky as the shirt he’s discarded.

“When I was really young [fame] morphed who I was,” said Mendes in that same interview. “If [my life] was to become normal, it would feel un-normal to me.” His performance at the O2 may not go down in history, but judging by the reaction to it, he won’t have to worry about having a normal life any time soon.