HANDWRITTENShawn Mendes circumvented traditional routes to a recording contract by posting short clips of himself singing other people's songs on the video sharing service Vine. These were no more than a few seconds Vine's restrictions set the limit at six seconds, which is hardly enough time to cover a chorus but it was enough to set some teenage hearts aflutter, which led to a contract with Island, which led to an EP in 2014, which led to the full length debut