Shawn Mendes apologized to Sam Smith after using the wrong pronoun while introducing the singer at the Jingle Ball concert on iHeartRadio. Shawn introduced Sam as "he" instead of "them".

He apologized and said it would not happen again, while Sam accepted the apology and said "we are all learning together".

In September 2019, Sam Smith said on social media: "After a life of being at war with my gender, I have decided to embrace myself for who I am, inside and out." Sam identifies as non-binary and therefore, like all other people, uses the pronouns "they / them".

Non-binary is a spectrum of gender identities, which are not exclusively male and female. Some non-binary people feel they are a mix of the two genders, while some others do not identify with either gender.