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Clay Aiken gossips about Shawn Mendes' sexuality, 'I shouldn't out him if he didn't'
"I joke that after I came out publicly, it stopped being a story," Aiken said.
Rumors about Shawn Mendes' sexuality have been spreading for years, but now gay singer Clay Aiken is gossiping about it, too.
While sitting down with Variety to talk about his new album "Christmas Bells Are Ringing," when he brought up Mendes' sexuality out of the blue.
The 45-year-old American Idol alum asked the interviewer, "By the way, did Shawn Mendes come out today?" He then asked if the reporter had seen Mendes' Instagram video. "I didn't finish watching it because I looked at the time and I was like, 'Oh God, I gotta get on the computer.' So I don't know if he really did," he said.
Although there doesn't seem to be a video matching Aiken's description on Mendes' Instagram account, he may be talking about a clip of the Canadian pop star talking about "figuring out his sexuality" during a concert that went viral on social media in late October.
"Since I was really young, there's been this thing about my sexuality, and people have been talking about it for so long," he said during a concert performance at Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheater, Out reports. "I think it's kind of silly because I think sexuality is such a beautifully complex thing, and it's so hard to just put into boxes. It always felt like such an intrusion on something very personal to me. Something that I was figuring out in myself, something that I had yet to discover and still have yet to discover."
Aiken seemed to realize he might have overstepped, saying, "I shouldn't out him if he didn't."
When the interviewer asked Aiken how he feels about people speculating about Mendes' sexuality, Aiken talked about his own experience dealing with the media suggesting he was gay. "I feel like no one has speculated about s–t since 2000 — since I went through that crap," he responded. "I joke that after I came out publicly, it stopped being a story. I don't know that anybody has had press in that way, like tabloid stories or questions by Diane Sawyer."
Aiken suggested that some of this change can be explained by Don't Ask, Don't Tell ending in 2011 and the country coming "to terms with us gays a little better."
"We have insisted our media become more empathetic," he explained. "Press can't invade in the way they used to be able to invade. And that's great."
The "Invisible" singer then apologized for getting off track, "I didn't mean to derail this. It just came up on my screen right before I turned on the computer."
Aiken's album "Christmas Bells Are Ringing" drops on November 22.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
