Camila Cabello is being interviewed atop a kitchen island in Shawn Mendes' new Netflix documentary In Wonder when she's taken back to a memory from four or five years ago, when the now Grammy-nominated couple were single and backstage at a Taylor Swift show getting to know each other. She just went over to say "Hi," Cabello tells the camera. Then came the pleasantries. Then came the song they wanted to write. Then came the Jingle Ball tour they did together. Then came the four or so years they couldn't see each other.

"And that's really when the f---ing saga got started," she says.

Cabello and Mendes' relationship is a linchpin in Mendes' documentary, 90-minutes of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews that dropped ahead of his fourth studio album Wonder. In Wonder gives audiences an inside look at the Canadian singer circa winter 2019, when he was in the headlines for canceling a performance in Sao Paolo, Brazil. He had gotten laryngitis, a swelling of the vocal chords. Through the eyes of acclaimed music director Grant Singer (The Weeknd, Taylor Swift), Mendes and his closest counsel are interviewed at length as Mendes stares at his career's mortality (albeit briefly) dead-on.

Here are three of the most revealing moments from the documentary, including Mendes' detailing Cabello's jaw-dropping reaction when she realized "Treat You Better" was about her and Mendes looking back on the ever-so-fleeting Vine fame.

The car ride where Cabello realized "Treat You Better" was about her. "Everything is about her," Mendes adds.

While gazing outside a car window with Airpods locked in, Mendes recalls a car ride with Cabello in New York. A song of his came on, he says. Cabello asks, this is about me, right?

"Yeah it's about you. Everything's about you. They've always been about you," Mendes says.

Mendes adds: "I'm rhyming off the songs. Treat You Better, all these songs. She's like "Oh my god." She literally had no idea." Mendes goes on to tell the audience that he compares writing a song about his relationship with Cabello to taking a picture of the moon with your iPhone — a pic in the camera roll that pales in comparison to the real thing. "And you're like, 'It's not supposed to be captured.' You know? It's just supposed to be for us."

Mendes' lung-bursting "Treat You Better" was released back in June 2016, peaking at six on the Billboard charts. Two years later, Mendes' first No. 1 came as a collab with Cabello (her second) for "Señorita."

Mendes is asked about starting out his career "making Vines for the love of it."

In 2014, a feature story on Mendes described him as "a sweet-voiced, dreamy-faced 15-year-old Canadian singer whose name, at the moment, is inextricably connected with the words 'Vine sensation.'"

Six years later, Mendes is asked about what it's like to come from the now-defunct app where he gained fame for doing cover songs.

“So this thing you start doing in your bedroom, making Vines for the love of it. Is it hard to protect that pure thing that started it all?" a male voice asks Mendes early in the documentary. Mendes nods with a gentle yes.

One of Mendes' early TikTok covers was "Say Something” from A Great, Big World and Christina Aguilera. Mendes' manager Andrew Gertler says in the documentary that he happened to find Mendes after a simple Google search for the original song, which Gertler had just recently heard for the first time. Gertler ran into Mendes' video, one of the first search results to pop up.

"Reached out, and we Facetimed Shawn and his mom" Gertler says. "Immediately Shawn starts grilling us with questions about how the music business works, why he might need a manager."

Mendes' fans are evolved.

Popstar fandom has largely gone virtual in 2020. But, just a year ago, Mendes was staring outside the window of his hotel room in Rio De Janiero, Brazil when a mob of young fans were sprinting to the front of the building. Why? "Maybe it's 'cause I just posted the Instagram of the sunset," Mendes casually says. "Doesn't mean that i'm down there."

Somehow, Mendes was discovered by his fans by posting a simple photo seeing out into the sunset — most likely the result of the internet research hustle of young teens.

The original post seems to have been deleted (you can see it in the documentary), although he did post a touching thank you to the guests he brought on stage during the Rio performance.

Related:

• Shawn Mendes strips his soul bare in first In Wonder documentary trailer
• Shawn Mendes drops new single 'Wonder,' the title track of his next album
• Taylor Swift responds to Scooter Braun selling masters to her first six albums

Author:Omar Sanchez - Source: EW