weak | S.M

2

"So, Shawn. I've heard you've been working a lot on your next album recently, correct?"

"Yes, correct." He nods.

"Tell me about it. How's it going?"

"It's crazy, actually. I feel like this album's been the only thing on my mind these past weeks. I've been working a lot with my team in Canada, we stayed in this cabin and just buried ourselves in music. It was amazing."

"Sounds... intense."

"It was." He agrees. Shawn straightens his posture after he takes a gulp of his water.

"How did you make it work? Didn't you feel kind of isolated in that cabin?" The interviewer asks. He's good.

I turn up the volume in my headphones and sharpen my pen when Shawn speaks in the video.

"We did, but doesn't that make the whole experience even better? We kind of lost track of time and focused on only one thing, which was music."

"I saw your fans freaked out a bit on social media, they were like 'hey, where did Shawn go?'"

"Yeah, I saw that too. I had to tweet out just to assure them I was alive." Shawn chuckles. "They're always quick to notice something's up. It's like they read my mind."

"Must be hard sometimes."

"Sometimes. 99% of the time it's great, though. They've always been really supportive of me, ever since the beginning of my career." Shawn replies smoothly. As I listen to him speak, I wonder how he always manages to say the right thing. While he continues to speak so lovingly about his fan base, I write down a short comment in my notebook:

Image: boy next door

"Back to this cabin... Did you really stay there for weeks, just writing on your album?"

"Yes and no." Shawn replies. He scratches his nose and leans his elbows on his thighs. "After a while we kind of got stuck. It was like you said earlier, we got isolated, which can be good, but at one point we just... lost it, you know? It's like any other work, you can't go for eight hours straight without taking breaks, right?"

The interviewer nods.

"So that's what we did. We took a break, went back to the city, enjoyed ourselves... It was nice and I got some inspiration back."

"Your friend George posted this picture on instagram-" The interviewers shows a photo of Shawn and his, I'm guessing team, at a bar. They hold bears in their hands and Shawn's eyes are half-closed.

"Was this your source of inspiration?" The interviewer asks jokingly. Shawn scratches his neck and shakes his head.

"That's embarrassing." They both laugh.

"I notice a few females in the picture. Any of them giving you the inspiration you needed?"

In this moment, I don't know if I should lift my hat for this reporter or step on him for this question. He just asked Shawn openly if he had an one night stand with any of these women! That's brave!

Now I'm intrigued.

"It wasn't like that." Shawn answers calmly.

Of course.

"It was just a night out with the guys."

"No one else, then? No girlfriend?"

"No girlfriend. I'm just not in that place right now, not with everything that's going on."

As I continue to watch the interview, I make some notes about Shawn. He adores his fans, recently bought his new apartment in LA, won on the EMA's, went on his fourth world tour, females love him and he's writing his fifth album. This guy is doing everything right!