Shawn Mendes

Shawn Mendes followed the trail to stardom blazed by fellow Canadian teen idol Justin Bieber, leveraging a rabid social media audience to catapult to worldwide pop music fame.

Mendes learned to play guitar at age 13 by watching YouTube tutorial videos, and within a year, he began posting his own cover videos to the platform. He posted his rendition of Bieber's "As Long as You Love Me" to social video app Vine in 2013, and earned 10,000 likes and as many followers within the first 24 hours. Twelve months later, Mendes was the third most-followed musician across the Vine platform, and after winning television personality Ryan Seacrest's "Best Cover Song" contest, he signed to Island Records, issuing his first single "Life of the Party" in June 2014. The album Handwritten debuted atop the Billboard 200, making Mendes the youngest artist to enter the charts at number one since the 2010 release of Bieber's My World 2.0.

"I Know What You Did Last Summer," written and performed by Mendes and Fifth Harmony member Camila Cabello, peaked at number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 2016, and the singers' undeniable chemistry fueled conjecture they might be romantically involved in real life as well - speculation they continued to nurture on their respective social media channels. Mendes released his chart-topping sophomore full-length Illuminate in 2016, highlighted by the lead single "Treat You Better," a Top Ten hit. A sold-out world tour primed audiences for the 2018 release of his third LP, a self-titled effort that like its predecessors debuted atop the Billboard charts; its leadoff single "If I Can't Have You" debuted at number two, the singer's highest-charting effort to date. Mendes and Cabello reunited in 2019 for "Señorita," a number one single across a record-setting 40 countries worldwide.