Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAs part of a big expansion of Shawn Mendes manager Andrew Gertler’s AG Artists, the company has signed fast-rising Canadian singer-songwriter Lauren Spencer-Smith and Arista’s JP Saxe, and Mendes’ longtime A&R Ziggy Chareton has joined as a partner on their management.
Chareton will also co-manage Mendes.Gertler and Chareton have a long history together: They met in the early 2010s when both were interns in Atlantic Records’ marketing department.
In 2014, they brought a 15-year-old Mendes to Island Records, where Chareton had been hired as an A&R rep. Gertler had seen a YouTube clip of Mendes singing Great Big World’s “Say Something,” looped in Chareton, and convinced the young singer’s parents to bring him to New York to meet with Island’s then-CEO David Massey.
Mendes signed with Island almost immediately and the rest, as they say, was history: Within a year Mendes became a major star, and within two a global superstar; he has 23 RIAA-certified multiplatinum or gold records to his credit.
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