By 2016, Shawn Mendes was already a pop superstar. After gaining popularity on the social media app Vine, the Canadian singer-songwriter was snapped up by Island Records in 2014 and scored a Billboard 200 chart-topping debut album with Handwritten a year later. That record shooting to No.1 in its first week of release earned Mendes the title of being the youngest artist to debut in the top spot since Justin Bieber’s My World 2.0 six years earlier.
Only 14 months later, Mendes was already entering a new era, readying his second studio album, Illuminate. The star began opening up the world of the album with its lead single, “Treat You Better,” a lowkey but infectious, syncopated pop ode to longing for someone who is already in a relationship with another person who doesn’t look after them well enough. Co-written by Mendes, Teddy Geiger, and Scott Harris, the track struck a chord with listeners – it peaked at No.6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has since been certified a whopping seven times platinum by the RIAA.
Listen to Shawn Mendes’ “Treat You Better” now.
“Teddy had worked with Shawn before and Shawn was excited to get the three of us together,” Harris told Songwriter Universe of how the song came together. “The vibe was immediately right. We all get along really well and it kind of came right out. It was actually a full-on reggae song until we switched the guitar part right before we recorded the demo.”
Taking out its original reggae lilt didn’t dilute the heart of the song – a pining promise to do right by someone if they just give you a chance. Fans speculated for years who Mendes had written the single about and, in his Netflix documentary Wonder in 2020, he finally revealed his muse: Camila Cabello. “For the past four years, just being friends and not seeing each other very often, to finally being able to be together, she was always there to look out for me as a human being,” he said in the film. “She’s got my back, and I think that’s what your partner’s for.”
Shawn Mendes – Treat You Better
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Although “Treat You Better” tapped into Mendes’ feelings about his fellow pop star, the music video looked elsewhere. The artist wanted to create a visual that was story-driven and told the tale of an abusive relationship through the video, which was directed by Ryan Pallotta. “I love how the fans are reacting to it, especially the domestic violence hotline [number] at the end of it,” he told People after its release. “I think our goal of spreading the message worked really well.”
As well as raising awareness for an important issue, Mendes wanted the video to make viewers think about “treating each other right.” “Personally, I’ve seen that happen wrong in a lot of different ways, emotionally and physically,” he said. “I just wanted to spread the message that it shouldn’t be that way.”
By 2018, the video had surpassed one billion views on YouTube. “Of any video, I was not expecting that one to be the one that hit that, so it’s crazy,” he told MTV News at the time.” In the years since, the powerful video has continued to draw attention, hitting the two billion views milestone in December 2020. “Treat You Better,” meanwhile, teed up Illuminate perfectly, with the album continuing Mendes’ stratospheric success.
