Shawn Mendes sends Zack Tabudlo love for song cover

Zack Tabudlo might just be Shawn Mendes’ biggest Filipino fanboy!

The Binibini singer took to social media to share his excitement that the singer behind the hits Stitches and Señorita had approved of his song cover of It’ll Be Okay on the video-sharing platform TikTok.

In an Instagram post, the 20-year-old shared his emotional reaction to the Canadian singer-songwriter’s approval. It was last December when Shawn posted a performance clip singing It’ll Be Okay across his socials. The song immediately became a Top 3 trending topic worldwide.

“MY HEART LITERALLY STOPPED. HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS. SHAWN FREAKIN MENDES FREAKIN COMMENTED AND LIKED MY TIKTOK COVER OF HIS SONG,” Zack wrote on Instagram.

It was on Friday when Zack shared a video of him on TikTok, singing one of Shawn’s new songs It’ll Be Okay. The short clip with over 1.7 million views was “liked” by Shawn with a black heart emoji down in the comments section.

Zack responded: “HI SHAWN U R MY HERO.”

The up-and-coming OPM singer is making waves globally. Just last year, he was featured as an international hitmaker in a Rolling Stone article.

Zack was praised for his “soaring soprano voice” and was even compared to Filipino-American hitmaker Bruno Mars and Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine.

He closed out 2021 with his breakthrough single, Binibini, topping the list of Spotify Philippines’ most-streamed songs of 2021, while Nangangamba, his other chart-topper, emerged as the second most-streamed OPM song.

His most recent releases are Pano and Hatdog, his collab single with James Reid. Zack himself wrote, mastered, mixed and produced these songs.

According to Zack, he wanted Pano to make audiences cry “but in a good way,” while “Hatdog is definitely one of the most ‘chill’ songs that I’ve released so far. It’s super laid back and just easy to listen to.”