The male Adele? The Scottish Ed Sheeran? No, I’m the only Lewis Capaldi!
Meet the young pop genius who’s taken the music charts and US TV by storm — in his own, inimitable fashion...
FOR the budding pop star, the families relaxing in the bar of a French holiday camp were hardly the toughest of crowds. Even so, when the pudgy-cheeked Scots boy clambered up on stage for his turn at karaoke, the audience was poised to offer a consolatory round of applause.
But the voice never wavered as, with a fearlessness belying his years, young Lewis Capaldi blew the roof off with a no-holds-barred version of Queen’s We Are The Champions. It was followed by another Queen song before he returned to his seat – with an ovation ringing in his ears and a broad grin on his face.
Some people never find their calling. Capaldi was only four years old when he discovered a love of performing. Now 22, he has followed through on his early promise and established himself as one of pop’s hottest properties.
After a raft of hit singles, his million-selling debut album – Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent – is on course for a fourth week at No1. Mobbed by fans wherever he goes, he rubs
shoulders with celebrities – including his famous cousin, former Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi, who agreed to make an appearance in one of his music videos.
What is more, this self-confessed ‘chubby kid’ with anxiety issues now looks set to conquer the US with his neat line in soulful ballads and self-deprecating humour.
Hailed as the ‘male Adele’ or the ‘Scottish Ed Sheeran’, Capaldi set the Twittersphere ablaze after a storming appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden earlier this week, when his boy-next-door charm and ready wit kept the TV audience of one of the US’s most important chat shows entranced.
It led to a rare invitation to return and perform on the following night’s show, with Corden gushing on Twitter: ‘Every single person in the audience and who works for @latelateshow fell in love with @LewisCapaldi today.’
Cracking the States would be the culmination of a whirlwind year for a young man who still lives at home with his parents and leaves his mother to wash his dirty laundry.
Longlisted for the BBC Music Sound of 2018, the singer was nominated for a Brit critics’ choice award and at one point last month had three songs at once in the singles top ten – Someone You Loved at No 3, Hold Me While You Wait at No 5 and Grace at No 9.
Powered by his gritty, distinctly Scottish vocals, Someone You Loved topped the charts and stayed there for seven weeks.
Meanwhile, on social media, he has delighted his 527,000 followers with daft videos and wry comments posted under his Twitter handle, Lewis Calamari. In one, he filmed himself walking up and down Hollywood Boulevard in LA in search of a plunger after blocking the toilet in his hotel.
Another showed Capaldi singing opera in the shower, wearing a pair of daft sunglasses, before declaring deadpan to camera: ‘I wish to be taken seriously as an artist.’
It’s hard to do otherwise when the boy who grew up in Bathgate, West Lothian, is already worth an estimated £8million – and all achieved without the help of any manipulative Svengali.
His achievements are not those of a pampered pop puppet created by a TV talent show. Behind the flippant exterior lurks a serious young talent who put years of hard graft into becoming an overnight success.
He still recalls fondly that first karaoke performance on holiday. He had been listening obsessively to a Queen CD during the long drive to France from the family home in his Glasgow birthplace.
‘I don’t know why we didn’t fly,’ he says. ‘But my mum and dad would play Genesis, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis and Queen on repeat... and it was the first time I fell in love with a big voice.’
He developed his own raspy, old-before-its-time voice after watching Joe Cocker perform A Little Help From My Friends on an old TV show.
‘Obviously, now I’ve got a gruffer voice, but I don’t think I was supposed to sing like that,’ he says. ‘I might have done some irreparable damage over the years.’
He first picked up a guitar at nine after his parents, Carol and Mark, moved the family to Bathgate, although it was a few years later before he found he could put singing and playing together.
ABASSIST friend played and sang Live Forever by Oasis at a primary school guitar club and left Capaldi mesmerised. ‘I got him to teach me how to do it,’ he says. ‘For me, that was the moment when I knew I had to step up my game.’
Playing live never fazed the young Capaldi, encouraged by his guitarist brother Warren, who is six years older. When Warren played a Foo Fighters cover with his band at the Barrowlands 2 one night, he brought young Lewis onstage to sing it.
‘It just felt natural – that’s what I should be doing,’ says Capaldi, whose brother would help sneak him into local pubs to play gigs when he was still underage.
‘I’d have to hide in the bathroom before I played and I’d always leave immediately after.’ He was about 11
when he started writing songs, and was in and out of cover bands throughout his early teens before deciding he was better off solo.
He would record songs on his phone – often in the bathroom – and upload them to his SoundCloud account.
By 17, he had left St Kentigern’s Academy determined to make a career of music and applied for a place on Hit The Road, a touring project for 14 to 19-year-olds that provides training workshops with industry professionals.
Capaldi met one of his co-managers through the scheme, while the other one discovered him online.
‘He was just scouring SoundCloud and just happened to find one of my scratchy demos and emailed me out of the blue,’ he says.
‘It was a weird moment where the stars aligned – everything just happened at the right time.’
Capaldi’s big break came when a fan caused a Twitter storm by posting a video clip of him performing Bruises, a song he had written three months earlier on his 20th birthday.
‘It was just a piano and vocal version but it went mini-viral,’ he recalls. When the song became the fastest by an unsigned artist to hit 25million streams on Spotify, label offers flooded in. He soon signed to Virgin EMI in the UK and Capitol Records in the US.
With his unconventional looks – his straggly mane of hair and jowly features – he appears at odds with the ultra-slick world of pop, and he confides: ‘I feel that I’ve got Imposter Syndrome.
‘When I’m sitting backstage at a festival in my trackies, looking around, I think, “What am I doing here?”. Everyone is an artist or looks like they should be on a catwalk, while I look like I should be at home watching Jeremy Kyle.’
He is wary of being mentioned in the same breath as megastars such as Sheeran and Adele, but is proud to reveal he received the surprise gift of a new watch from Sheeran, whom he will support at four outdoor gigs in August. ‘Fair play to him – it shows what a nice guy he is,’ he says. His fellow Scot, Paisley-born Paolo Nutini, is another big influence.
‘There are similarities – the Italian family link, and his dad owns a chip shop and my dad works as a fishmonger,’ he says.
‘But the only thing is, he’s very handsome and I am not. He kind of looks Scottish-Italian... and I look Scottish, full-stop.’
The self-deprecating humour spills over into his work. In the video for Grace, he pole-dances deadpan with a troupe of male strippers while the audience spill their drinks.
‘The idea for the video was mine, because the treatments we got were tedious. They were all, “Lewis is pining for a woman – in a field of wheat”. Er, no, I’m bloody not. I’m having a blast. Bring me male strippers, let’s have a laugh.
‘People take music too seriously. Even the idea of people paying to hear me shouting into a microphone for an hour is alien to me – and I hope that it always will be.’ Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent is an album of heartfelt break-up songs, some written following an ‘amicable but still upsetting split’ with his last girlfriend.
His music, he insists, did not save him from the pain.
‘I take issue when people say that songwriting is like therapy,’ he says. ‘If you think you need therapy, go and have therapy. This isn’t an outlet for my feelings.
‘I don’t have any qualms telling people how I feel about things.’
HE is equally upfront about the panic attacks he suffered while growing up, which prompted him to launch the LiveLive initiative.
A small donation from every ticket to his 2020 tour funds a team at each venue to help with stressrelated issues, so sufferers can attend his arena shows. It is not the first charity Capaldi has been able to help promote through his
music. The video for Someone You Loved was made in partnership with an organ donation campaign, Live Life Give Life.
‘I’m an organ donor and I support the new opt-out method which is coming in soon,’ he says.
‘So many people’s lives can be saved by ticking a box.
‘I’ve never really been one for causes before, but both these really got to me.’
Someone You Loved is accompanied by a heartfelt video featuring his Doctor Who actor cousin.
The idea came about after the pair were introduced at one of the singer’s London gigs.
He said: ‘Peter is my dad’s second cousin, so it was cool to have him in the video.
‘You can’t get much bigger than Doctor Who, can you? I first met him at my Scala show and it was nice to sit and talk to him properly.’
Family remains important to the singer, who is one of four children. His siblings include Aidan, an aspiring actor, and a sister, Danielle. Home is still a comfortable, detached home on a modern private estate and, although Capaldi is rarely there these days, it serves as a refuge from showbiz excesses.
‘My mum and dad would soon bring me down to earth if I got too big for my boots,’ he confides.
‘When I come home for those few days, Mum thinks I’m the best thing ever – then the fourth day she’s like, “You need to get out of my face”. She wants me back on the road.’
Yet despite all the success, the thing that has so far eluded Capaldi is romance.
‘I’ve been waiting for ladies to come out of the woodwork but it hasn’t happened,’ he says.
‘If my mother is looking to me getting married at any point, she is going to be disappointed.’
His heart may well be divinely uninspired romantically – but right now, the rest of his life seems heaven sent.