Camila Cabello Talks Shawn Mendes Reconciliation and Break-Up

Camila Cabello copped to being a proponent of getting back with your ex and discussed her own brief but public reconciliation with longtime boyfriend Shawn Mendes during an appearance on Call Her Daddy.

Host Alex Cooper not-so-subtly broached the subject by first asking Cabello if she approved of getting back with an ex, to which the singer quipped: “I, personally, I think it’s known, I’m a fan.” She went on to call it “helpful because, I am not a person — you can’t forbid things with me.”

With the groundwork laid, Cooper barreled ahead and asked Cabello what everyone’s been thinking since last spring: It sure looked, from paparazzi shots obviously, like she and Mendes were at least briefly back together after splitting in 2021. 

Cabello didn’t deny it and stood firmly behind her getting-back-with-an-ex creed. “I’m kind of impulsive in that way,” she said. “If I feel it, I say it, and I’m not really good at not doing that. Because the worst place for it to live is my mind, and then I’m Ryan Gosling in The Notebook building a house for this person.”

With a very self-aware twist, Cabello added: “I would rather say it and see what happens than wake up the next day and find out it’s been heavily documented. I opted for that route. But it is what it is — it was a great route, it was a fun time, it was a fun moment. And I will always care about him and love him. He’s such a good person. And I’m lucky. Some people have exes who are awful, and he is not. He’s a really kind, good person.” 

When asked how she and Mendes decided to call off their relationship for good the second time, Cabello said it was less of a “decision” and more of a realization. “You’re just kind of like, it’s not a fit, it doesn’t feel right. And I think, luckily, I was in a place in my life where it took me less time to realize that. It took us both less time to be like, ‘This doesn’t feel right and we don’t need to try so hard to make it work. It’s all good.’”

Along with Mendes, Cabello reflected on the reasoning behind her other notable public break-up from Fifth Harmony (whom, Rolling Stone recently confirmed once again, are not getting back together any time soon). Cabello said she was still able to “focus on and remember the joyful times” and spoke about how much the group helped her grow as an artist. But, she recalled, it was when she started writing music on her own that she began “distancing myself from the group vision.” 

She continued: “It felt like they were still really passionate and into that, so I was just like, ‘I’m not happy here anymore. It doesn’t feel aligned.’” 

At the very end of the conversation, Cabello spoke about her new music as well, as she preps the follow-up to her 2022 album, Familia. Cabello described the upcoming record as her “Live my questions album,” paraphrasing a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. 

“It’s really sitting in the discomfort of things and realizing there’s not gonna be a neat, in-a-box answer,” she added. “I feel strong in these ways, weak in these ways, and there’s no real clear answer here. But the album process has been such a journey. It started out with me having that intention of going back to how it started for me, which was just sitting with myself and really getting back to that first passion of songwriting. Nerding out over references and artists and poetry — whatever — and really tapping into that.”  

Camila Cabello copped to being a proponent of getting back with your ex and discussed her own brief but public reconciliation with longtime boyfriend Shawn Mendes during an appearance on Call Her Daddy.

Host Alex Cooper not-so-subtly broached the subject by first asking Cabello if she approved of getting back with an ex, to which the singer quipped: “I, personally, I think it’s known, I’m a fan.” She went on to call it “helpful because, I am not a person — you can’t forbid things with me.”

With the groundwork laid, Cooper barreled ahead and asked Cabello what everyone’s been thinking since last spring: It sure looked, from paparazzi shots obviously, like she and Mendes were at least briefly back together after splitting in 2021. 

Cabello didn’t deny it and stood firmly behind her getting-back-with-an-ex creed. “I’m kind of impulsive in that way,” she said. “If I feel it, I say it, and I’m not really good at not doing that. Because the worst place for it to live is my mind, and then I’m Ryan Gosling in The Notebook building a house for this person.”

With a very self-aware twist, Cabello added: “I would rather say it and see what happens than wake up the next day and find out it’s been heavily documented. I opted for that route. But it is what it is — it was a great route, it was a fun time, it was a fun moment. And I will always care about him and love him. He’s such a good person. And I’m lucky. Some people have exes who are awful, and he is not. He’s a really kind, good person.” 

When asked how she and Mendes decided to call off their relationship for good the second time, Cabello said it was less of a “decision” and more of a realization. “You’re just kind of like, it’s not a fit, it doesn’t feel right. And I think, luckily, I was in a place in my life where it took me less time to realize that. It took us both less time to be like, ‘This doesn’t feel right and we don’t need to try so hard to make it work. It’s all good.’”

Along with Mendes, Cabello reflected on the reasoning behind her other notable public break-up from Fifth Harmony (whom, Rolling Stone recently confirmed once again, are not getting back together any time soon). Cabello said she was still able to “focus on and remember the joyful times” and spoke about how much the group helped her grow as an artist. But, she recalled, it was when she started writing music on her own that she began “distancing myself from the group vision.” 

She continued: “It felt like they were still really passionate and into that, so I was just like, ‘I’m not happy here anymore. It doesn’t feel aligned.’” 

At the very end of the conversation, Cabello spoke about her new music as well, as she preps the follow-up to her 2022 album, Familia. Cabello described the upcoming record as her “Live my questions album,” paraphrasing a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. 

“It’s really sitting in the discomfort of things and realizing there’s not gonna be a neat, in-a-box answer,” she added. “I feel strong in these ways, weak in these ways, and there’s no real clear answer here. But the album process has been such a journey. It started out with me having that intention of going back to how it started for me, which was just sitting with myself and really getting back to that first passion of songwriting. Nerding out over references and artists and poetry — whatever — and really tapping into that.”