Shawn Mendes Talks New 'Truthful' Music and Why Mentor John Mayer Is a 'Badass'

Shawn Mendes is stitching together a mixture of genres for his latest album.

The singer-songwriter’s new self-titled album Shawn Mendes, out Friday, was inspired by the musician pushing himself to see “what I was capable of doing a little bit more.”

“I found myself listening to a lot more rock and urban hip-hop music,” he tells PEOPLE. “One day I would create a rock song and the next day I would create more of an R&B song, so the whole album is this really big mixture of things, which I’m really excited about.”

“I realized that all of the genre walls – like people who say, ‘I only listen to country music’ or ‘I only listen to rap music’ – it’s kind of non-existent at this point because everybody listens to everything,” Mendes, 19, adds. “Everything was written from my heart and my story, and that’s what keeps the music cohesive.”

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