The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
‘I’m still writing about failed relationships...’
BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend kicks off in Dundee today and thousands of revellers are gearing up to hit Camperdown Park for the massive live music event.
After the 2020 Big Weekend was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, music fans will finally be able to let off steam as more than 100 acts take to the stage for the three-day event.
With big names including The 1975, Jonas Brothers, 30 Seconds To Mars, Anne-marie and Wet Leg all included in the line-up, it’s one of the most hotly anticipated events on the Dundee calendar.
Ahead of the Big Weekend, we caught up with Sunday headliner Lewis Capaldi to chat about life, love and his new record.
The UK’S most unassuming musical superstar was in the city for a couple of low-key sets at Fat Sam’s last weekend to celebrate the launch of his second album.
“This is the first time I’ve been in Scotland for over two months,” says the Bathgate-raised singer on a lazy Saturday morning.
“I’m sitting in my hotel room looking at a Lidl across the road and – I don’t know why – but it’s really warming my heart to see people leaving the shop.
“I can just imagine their bags are full of square sausage – it’s made me think of being at home.
“Everyone’s woken up late and someone’s been sent out to get the breakfast and they’ve just got back. It’s a really nice feeling.”
An entertainingly edgy character when he makes television or radio appearances, last year Capaldi made public his Tourette’s syndrome diagnosis – and this year’s Netflix documentary How I’m Feeling Now revealed the impact of fame on his mental health.
He’s a mellow and thoughtful presence when speaking one-to-one down the phone, though.
Despite the monumental success of 2019’s debut album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent – the biggest-selling British album in half a decade, with the main single Someone You Loved topping the US Billboard Hot 100 – Capaldi has spent a lot of time at home recently.
“The new album – Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent – comes from the same place as the first one,” he explains.
“I’m still writing about relationships – or failed relationships.
“The big revelation on this record was writing more introspectively, about mental health and stuff going on in my head, rather than about things around me.
“We were all forced to deal with things during lockdown – we spent a lot of time in our own heads. We had no choice.
“I thought I was going to get to travel somewhere exotic, like Costa Rica or the Maldives, to make a second record but Covid put a stop to that.
“I made the majority of this album in Scotland – listen, it’s beautiful, but it’s not where I thought I’d be.
“And I wrote it surrounded by the same stuff as the first album, so the subject matter is still in that realm.”
The album was mostly written “in Airbnbs around Glasgow” during the height of lockdown, says Lewis.
It was a period he found mentally tough, as did many others – although he knew he was lucky, with no financial worries and no career-launching plans scrapped, unlike other musician friends.
When we spoke, 24 hours after the album’s release, hectic normality was back.
“Yesterday was a full-on day, as expected, but it’s good, man,” he says.
“I feel better for being in Scotland, calmer and more relaxed. It’s out there now, there’s nothing more for me to do – there’s no going back.
“People have it in their
hands, on their CD players, in their iphones, so I feel this beautiful loss of control.”
Now the hard work really begins.
“For the next four weeks, I literally cannot do anything I want to do.
“That lack of freedom’s jarring because for years I had nothing but (doing what I want) – but most other people who do normal jobs don’t have the freedom to just f **k off for extended periods and do what they want.
“Everyone has obligations, everyone has commitments. Getting back into it, it’s like coming back to the first day of school.”
This time, it all starts in Dundee. “I’m just glad to be a part of the Big Weekend, let alone headlining,” Capaldi says.
“I mean, the Jonas Brothers might take a look at the line-up and say: ‘Why the f**k is Lewis Capaldi ahead of us?’ This is the only country in the world where that would happen, so I feel an enormous sense of hometown pride.”
He asks if I remember the old Doghouse in Dundee.
“I played there once and I remember coming up from West Lothian to see The View on a bus, I must have been 15, 16 at the time.
“Me, Mark Sharp & The Bicycle Thieves, maybe some of The Snuts boys, we all piled on, bottle in hand, and charged up here – I have fond memories of that, we did it a few times, it was f ***** g class.
“Basically, my memories of Dundee are getting p **** d, that’s it.”
At time of writing, the new album is outselling the rest of the top 20 combined.
All that hard work is already paying off.
Lewis Capaldi plays BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend 2023 at Camperdown Park, Dundee, on Sunday, May 28. His second album, Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent, is out now.