In My Blood

The lead single from Shawn Mendes' third studio album is a heartbreaking and vulnerable rock ballad about overcoming obstacles. Someone help me I'm crawling in my skin Sometimes I feel like giving up But I just can't It isn't in my blood Shawn is feeling burned out but refuses to give up and fade away because it's not in his blood. He said: "This is the closest song to my heart I've ever written."

Shawn penned the song with regular collaborators: Canadian Geoff Warburton, who is the brother of one of Shawn's best friends, Ian. Warburton contributed to the writing of nine Illuminate cuts, including the song "There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back." American songwriter and producer Scott Harris who contributed to the writing of ten Illuminate cuts including the singles "There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back" and "Treat You Better". Harris also co-penned The Chainsmokers' hit tune "Don't Let Me Down." New York singer-songwriter Teddy Geiger, who co-wrote "Stitches" from Shawn's debut album Handwritten and "There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back," "Mercy" and "Treat You Better" from his sophomore set Illuminate. Geiger also produced "In My Blood" along with Mendes.

The lyrics are about Mendes' personal experiences with anxiety. "It was kind of something that hit me last year," he confessed to Beats 1's Zane Lowe in a March 2018 interview. "Growing up, I was a pretty calm kid. I knew people who suffered from anxiety, found it kind of hard to understand, and then when it hits you, you're like, 'Oh my god, this is crazy.'" Shawn reassured fans that he is doing well. "When I play that song, I go 'Just so you know I'm okay,'" he said. "The best thing about it is that it's not all down. The whole reason I wrote the song was to be like, at the very end, 'It's not in my blood to do that.'"