Songfacts®:

• Shawn Mendes sings on this brooding power ballad of a girl who has grabbed his heart. However, he is unsure if his feelings are reciprocated and the uncertainty is tearing him apart.
• I'm a puppet on your string
  And even though you got good intentions
  I need you to set me free
  
  Shawn wants to be free from this girl's influence over his emotions. The use of a puppet to illustrate how one can be controlled by such intense feelings has been used in pop music since the 1960s when James & Bobby Purify admitted "Darling you've got full control of your puppet" and Elvis Presley described himself as helpless as "a puppet on a string." More recently Daya sung of not wanting to "be the puppet that you're playing on a string."
• Shawn co-wrote the song with four other songwriters.
  
  Teddy Geiger and Danny Parker who previously co-penned and co-produced "Stitches" for Mendes along with Daniel "Daylight" Kyriakides.
  
  Ilsey Juber, who other credits include Major Lazer's "Powerful."
  
  Robin Weisse who also co-wrote Pitbull & Ne-Yo's "Time Of Our Lives."
• The video was directed by Jay Martin ("Stitches") and filmed in Toronto. It shows Shawn struggling to escape a sinking car.