It's no coincidence that on the same day Lewis Capaldi was crowned the hardest-working artist in music, he lost his voice and was forced to cancel his Southampton show. Though barely better at Brixton Academy the night after, the 23-year-old soldiered on regardless, powered by “an arse full of steroids.”
It’s this winning combination of steely resolve and self-deprecating humour that has helped propel the Glaswegian singer-songwriter to stardom. Having started 2019 with a BRITs Critics’ Choice nod, he’s ending it having already topped the Billboard Hot 100, and with a Grammy nomination to boot.
In London he was treated like a returning hero, eliciting the sort of screams usually reserved for teen idols, plus his own personalised football chant. Capaldi had fun exposing the ludicrousness of the hysteria, triggering multiple confetti cannons and pyrotechnic displays and mocking the more exploitative aspects of the music industry for big laughs. In fact, there was so much comedy in Capaldi’s stage act that performances of songs from his deeply dolorous debut regularly came as a shock, like watching Peter Kay covering the first Bon Iver album.
Not that the audience seemed phased by this central contradiction: they happily bellowed along to every syllable of Bruises, Before You Go et al, before taking over entirely on Someone You Loved, when Capaldi’s voice finally gave way.
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