LEWIS CAPALDI

Buckle up for a wild night with the Scottish singer

Lewis Capaldi’s PR team must spend their days shrugging their shoulders in powerless resignation as their superstar client tweets another one liner mocking his abs, proclaiming himself to be as handsome as Shawn Mendes, or posting selfies on the toilet at the Grammy Awards.

If you want a polished pop star with a Dhs500 haircut, white teeth and a mediatrained approach to interviews, then Capaldi is not your guy. Remember, this is a man who called himself “the Scottish Beyonce” on a billboard in London.

“The music should be serious, and everything else should be fun because it is fun,” explains Capaldi, who logs another extraordinary feat in his short career by headlining an F1 gig in Abu Dhabi this month.

It’s almost a year since the Someone You Loved singer first played the UAE, delighting around 3,000 fans at the Al Majaz Amphitheatre in Sharjah. This month, the good-humoured Scot is back, playing to a vast Formula One after-party crowd, who will be treated to plenty of what he calls ‘ blether’ in between a set of heartfelt songs that have impressed the likes of Sir Elton John.

Capaldi has spent 2021 polishing his sophomore album, taking the radical step of cancelling live shows to focus on the record. “I really want to make sure whatever I put out next is the absolute best it can be, partly for my own sanity, because I’m going to have to sing these songs every night for the next few years on tour, but ultimately for all of you who made the first album everything it was,” he explained. “Despite having all this extra time to write, all the Covid restrictions have made it harder to go and record stuff I’ve been working on or even be around all the people I loved working with on the first album.”

When it arrives, the album will be a follow-up to his 2019 debut Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent, which enabled Capaldi to sell out a UK arena tour before the record even came out. “You cannot fathom some of the stuff when it is going on,” he says of his astonishing – and rapid – success. “It’s just daft. I sometimes worry that people think I’m used to it. But I’m not. It’s wild.”

When asked to pinpoint why his songs have made such a mark on fans, Capaldi is mystified. “I’ve got no clue. ‘What right do I have to be playing arenas?’ is what goes through my head. Impostor syndrome. I’m not better than any of these people, I’m not better at writing songs or singing.”

After smashing away at drums and guitars aged two, the now 25-yearold Glaswegian learned his craft singing in pubs, developing a strong, raspy voice that many liken to Joe Cocker. He was discovered by a music manager on SoundCloud and in 2017 released an EP which secured him a supporting slot on tours with ex- One Direction member Niall Horan and later Sam

Smith.

But it was in 2018 when things escalated and Someone You Loved became Capaldi’s breakthrough single, hogging the number one spot in the UK charts for seven weeks. American audiences then helped the song reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In 2020, Capaldi received a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year ( Someone You Loved) and four Brit Award nominations, eventually winning two for Song of the Year ( Someone You Loved) and Best New Artist.

“You can’t accept this as normality,” says Capaldi. “This is very weird. I’m so convinced it’s not going to last, this surely cannot go on.”

Perhaps Capaldi should be prepared for the eventuality that it might indeed go on for quite some time.