By DJ Heart
December 9th, 2025
On October 17th, Shawn Mendes performed for a sold-out crowd at the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California. It was the last stop on Shawn Mendes’ “On the Road Again” tour.
I purchased the tickets back in August for the show, and my mom accompanied me. We also purchased bus tickets, which meant we didn’t have to worry about driving to the venue to park our car.
My mom and I arrived at the venue about an hour before Showtime, and I noticed the Marquee that stated the show was sold out and there would be an opening act. We made it through security into the venue, and the merchandise booths were really long, so my mom and I decided to get to our seats and wait for the show to start. I was entering the venue, unaware of who the opening act was. It was an artist named Eddie Benjamin, whom I was unfamiliar with. Still, after hearing a couple of his songs, I can understand why he is an opening act for Shawn Mendes, because the music sounds similar to Shawn Mendes. I wasn’t sure when Shawn Mendes would take the stage. When the opening act was going to finish, so during one of the songs I went down to the merch booth on the left side of the venue during one of the songs, and there was no line, so I got myself a concert T-shirt that had a picture of Shawn Mendes on it, along with the tour dates.
So, after Eddie Benjamin had finished his set, it was about an hour before Shawn Mendes came on, so there was a lot of waiting. However, it was also a good time to get up, stretch a little bit, and grab some refreshments. At 9:00 p.m., that’s when the show started. The lights came down, and I had been waiting a long time for this particular moment. The screens on the stage were showing Shawn Mendes, and it was building up to his face, and I was very excited when he came out and opened with the song “Nothing is Holding Me Back.”
From that moment on, I was up on my feet dancing and singing along to a lot of the songs that I had grown up listening to. One of my favorite moments from the show at the beginning was hearing ‘Treat You Better’ live. Within 1 to 2 minutes of ‘Ruin’, a technical issue occurred, and the crowd was shocked but also understood that such things happen, so they began chanting. Shawn came back on stage and continued the song.
There was a point during the show where Shawn Mendes got on a golf cart, and the golf cart drove close to where I was sitting. Still, just a section down, and Shawn Mendes performed on the right side of the stage on a small platform and had invited two indigenous artists, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez and Renata Flores, to perform alongside him. I did not stay for the entire rest of the show because a massive number of people were expected to exit the venue once the show was over.
This was also my first Shawn Mendes concert, and it definitely won’t be my last.
