He’s had No 1s on both sides of the Atlantic, won two Brits and been nominated for a Grammy – but has kept his old friends and still looks for dates on Tinder. The reluctant superstar talks about mental health, fame and his new album
In March 2020, just before the UK went into lockdown, Lewis Capaldi played the biggest gigs of his career, a string of shows around Britain’s arenas. The tickets had sold out in 60 seconds: sometimes demand was such that he ended up playing the country’s biggest venues two nights on the trot. It was supposed to be the crowning glory of an extraordinary 12 months during which Capaldi had rocketed from the ranks of earnest, dressed-down, acoustic-guitar-toting singer-songwriters who had proliferated in the wake of Ed Sheeran’s success – “the ordinary boys”, as this publication called them – to become a huge star.
His single Someone You Loved entered the charts in 29 countries and spent seven weeks at No 1 in Britain. His debut album, Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent, became the UK’s biggest-selling album of 2019, a feat it would repeat in 2020. He won two Brits and was nominated for a Grammy, Someone You Loved having also gone to No 1 in the US, making him the first Scottish artist to top the US charts since Sheena Easton in 1981.
