Sparks are flying! Camila Cabello opened up about her dreamy new album, Romance, and how her real-life love with Shawn Mendes inspired her music. The former Fifth Harmony member was even able to pinpoint the exact moment her friendship with her “Señorita” collaborator became something more.
“During ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer,’ I really bonded with him as more than a friend,” Cabello, 22, said of their 2015 collaboration in her interview with Rolling Stone on Monday, November 18, just weeks before the release of her sophomore record. “I think he did, too, but we were both really young, and he was experiencing the pressures of his career. I don’t think we knew what to do with those feelings. It was this awkward thing where we both liked each other, but we weren’t together.”
The young singers met in 2014 and remained close friends ever since, supporting one another throughout their budding careers. After Cabello and Mendes released “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” fevered Shawnmila shippers speculated about a romance but both artists were adamant that they were just friends at the time.
“An energy was there from the beginning, but after that song, we didn’t spend as much time together,” Cabello continued in the Rolling Stone interview. “Our paths just didn’t cross in that way romantically until we started hanging out again and writing. For me, it just brought it back.”
Earlier this year, the pair released a sultry video for their second single together, “Señorita,” sparking even more rumors that the two were a couple. Days after the song’s debut, Us Weekly confirmed that the “Havana” singer had broken up with her then-boyfriend, Matthew Hussey.
After Cabello’s timely split, it seemed like she and the “Stitches” crooner, 21, were finally moving out of the friend zone. The two were first spotted holding hands at a 4th of July party in West Hollywood, and were photographed making out in Miami by the end of the month.
Now that the not-so-secret relationship is finally out, Cabello and Mendes have made sure the world knows their feelings for each other are stronger than ever — and not just a well-executed PR stunt.
“I really, really love him a lot,” the former X Factor contestant said during an appearance on the U.K.’s Capital Breakfast in October.
