COVER
Lewis Capaldi
Finding Identity in the Spotlight and Taking the Piss Along the Way
By Emily Rosati
Publishing date: May 03, 2023
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When Lewis Capaldi is at his lowest, he begins to unravel who he really is. Faced with the all too human dilemma of crafting an identity to present to the world—a tricky, fickle thing, by nature—, searching the corners of our lives for answers, Lewis tells me he has had a difficult back and forth in his head, making him second guess everything. He bonds with us somewhere in that universal pain, philosophizing our shortcomings and grief into something we can compartmentalize and make sense of. Unlike the lot of us, Lewis Capaldi has seen an untypical rise to fame, putting a heightened awareness of what it means to be Lewis Capaldi.
His origin story reads as something more familiar—born in Glasglow, Scotland before moving to Bathgate in West Lothian at the age of four, to his family who cemented themselves as his first layer of support. His family, and more pointedly, his parents, encouraged his passion for playing music, even sneaking him into pubs to perform his early gigs. By 2017, Lewis Capaldi released his first single “Bruises” independently, and quickly amassed 28 million plays on Spotify, solidifying him as the fastest unsigned artist to reach 25 million plays on the platform. This is where Lewis Capaldi begins to deviate course from what he considered to be ordinary life.
In the following year, the rising star wrote a song about the loss of his grandmother, “Someone You Loved”, and was quickly streamed billions of times. While at the same time, using his social media platforms, showing up as his radically authentic self, connecting him to millions of supporters worldwide. Now, Lewis Capaldi prepares to release his second album, Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent, with the lead single “Forget Me” already turning platinum in the UK. But not without an existential, identity crisis—or several.
When Lewis Capaldi is at his lowest, he begins to unravel who he really is. Faced with the all too human dilemma of crafting an identity to present to the world—a tricky, fickle thing, by nature—, searching the corners of our lives for answers, Lewis tells me he has had a difficult back and forth in his head, making him second guess everything. He bonds with us somewhere in that universal pain, philosophizing our shortcomings and grief into something we can compartmentalize and make sense of. Unlike the lot of us, Lewis Capaldi has seen an untypical rise to fame, putting a heightened awareness of what it means to be Lewis Capaldi.
His origin story reads as something more familiar—born in Glasglow, Scotland before moving to Bathgate in West Lothian at the age of four, to his family who cemented themselves as his first layer of support. His family, and more pointedly, his parents, encouraged his passion for playing music, even sneaking him into pubs to perform his early gigs. By 2017, Lewis Capaldi released his first single “Bruises” independently, and quickly amassed 28 million plays on Spotify, solidifying him as the fastest unsigned artist to reach 25 million plays on the platform. This is where Lewis Capaldi begins to deviate course from what he considered to be ordinary life.
In the following year, the rising star wrote a song about the loss of his grandmother, “Someone You Loved”, and was quickly streamed billions of times. While at the same time, using his social media platforms, showing up as his radically authentic self, connecting him to millions of supporters worldwide. Now, Lewis Capaldi prepares to release his second album, Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent, with the lead single “Forget Me” already turning platinum in the UK. But not without an existential, identity crisis—or several.
The more successful that I seem to become, the more insecure it seems to be that I get, which is really bizarre.
The more successful that I seem to become, the more insecure it seems to be that I get, which is really bizarre.
“The more successful that I seem to become, the more insecure it seems to be that I get, which is really bizarre,” Lewis Capaldi tells me via Zoom, amidst touring, gearing up for his second album release. He holds a calm and collected openness, despite his bustling day-to-day and recent reckonings that are highlighted in the intimate all-access documentary Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now directed by Joe Pearlman. It follows his journey of being a Grammy-nominated star, grappling with a diagnosis of Tourette’s Syndrome coming to the surface after pressures rise in direct correlation to his cumulative success, even manifesting as physical pains and shortness of breath in songwriting sessions for his album. The name of his upcoming album Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent, is even derived from a lyric of an unreleased song, reflecting what had become a debilitating insecurity he tells me, “It’s about me, not being able to write good songs, I guess. It was a song about trying and wanting to be good and something so bad that you’re always let down by yourself, either [from] pushing too hard or standards [being] too high.”
While the sentiment of the title and qualms with songwriting is easily understood—appealing to my and others’ inner subordinate with “gifted child” syndrome and the repercussions of wanting to be something greater than yourself—the thought of Lewis Capaldi falling short of expectation is hard to imagine. “I thought that after having a couple of big songs, I would be like ‘Ok, I know what I’m doing now’. But if anything, it really shook the foundations for me. And even now, [I don’t know] what’s a good song and what [isn’t]. I’m trying to go with my gut a bit more.”
His solution to managing his doubt is simple and spoken like a true collaborative Libra, “I think I don’t trust myself enough, so, I like to have someone else in the room that I trust,” enlisting experienced linguists such as Dan Nigro, Amy Allen, and Ed Sheeran, a few of his many co-writers, and even leaning on his parents for a nudge in the right direction.
In the same vein, in his single, “How I’m Feeling Now”, which Lewis credits to be the most personal song on the album and collided with the release of his documentary of the same name, he subtly highlights the complexities of having identity crises, with overlapping nuanced nods to self-esteem and ego. Lewis sings, “No sense of self but self-obsessed / I’m always trapped inside my fucking head,” connecting the dots between feeling consumed by thoughts of ourselves, even when we don’t know what it means to be ourselves.
Mention of this standout song and lyric surfaces a raw and honest vulnerability from Lewis, that prompts reflection on how his rapid rise to fame shook his previously-unwavering sense of self.
“I came into making music and approached social media and all the rest of it with knowing who I am. I like to take the piss about things. It was when other people [said] ‘Oh, he’s doing that because it’s a defense mechanism or something’, I was like ‘What?’ I didn’t think it was. And people just picking apart my personality. Then also, [my] taking the piss on social media became this weird-something that was used to sell albums,” he says to me, unraveling the thread of his inner machinations trying to find a comfortable place to settle between acting out of personal humor and how it became an unpredicted successful sales technique, that lead to his honest single.
My hobby became my job. If you stripped all this away tomorrow, who am I?
“It became, am I actually taking the piss because I think it’s funny or because I’m doing promo or something?… So that’s why there’s “no sense of self”, and I hate saying these things because it sounds so cliche—it wasn’t being famous that made me lose that, it was sort of the machine of promotion and selling and all that stuff.”
Being famous and amassing millions of followers aside, anyone active on social media can see themselves in the dilemma Lewis Capaldi presents to me. “Even if you’re not famous or a singer or whatever, you’re posting this curated version of your life,” Lewis says, speaking to navigating the almost philosophical quandaries of showing up publicly; using the mediums to sell yourself, whether it be for social acceptance and connection or professional promotion—an intersect that is often in attendance. “It was a weird thought process to go through in that,” he confesses to me, rousing myself, too, to question how frequently we teeter the lines of manipulation as we carefully craft our online presence to send messages of virtue, a less organic version of engaging offline.
“At the same time, constantly talking about yourself in interviews, constantly talking about yourself when you’re in the studio, constantly talking about yourself on social media. You’re talking about yourself all the time, you’re thinking about yourself like ‘am I this person, am I that person’,” Lewis shares, putting into perspective, the dark shadow that fame and attention casts over the pressure of being perceived. This to say, Lewis Capaldi is keenly aware of the dangers of being all too consumed by the idea of a self, facing you with the conundrum of how both important and meaningless crafting an identity can be. On one hand, we use our identity as a compass in which we move through the world, pointing to our values and interests. On the other, identity is always being created anew, ever-changing, with freedom prevailing once you face the reality of being your own future and not a manifestation of your past.
“My hobby became my job. If you stripped all this away tomorrow, who am I? Which, again, sounds mental,”—it doesn’t,—“It was a quarter-life crisis thing. And it sounds cliche, I understand that, but I had loads and loads of questions.”
Lewis Capaldi has asserted himself as an authentic and relatable creator, evidently neatly packaging existential musings. His music and lyrics resonate with his listeners, despite the pressure he applies on himself as a result of his rising fame, further proving my point as we dissect the phrase “on and on and on” in “How I’m Feeling Now”. He reveals to me that this was informed by rhythmic, cyclical thoughts that often plague our minds, highlighting the power of music to capture and convey anxiety-based emotions that are often difficult to put into words.
“The “on and on and on” informs the rest of the song. [It’s] that intrusive thought, the voice in your head is trying to calm or quiet that you’re constantly fighting with, ruminating and bouncing around, taking up all the space available in your brain. That song had that for it, but I think it was completely subconscious,” Lewis says, reinforcing an idea that music is a form of expression and often, great songs are born out of pure emotion.
We ruminate on how despite wanting to write a great song, it can be more about your subconscious creator catching a flow. He lets me in on a conversation he had with Jack White the day prior, making me privy to insights that my ordinary would not normally allow for, where he learned to let the music flow out of him rather than trying to force a specific idea or lyric, “Jack White said something about just [playing] and then [letting] whatever flow out of you, and then that’s the song. You’re not necessarily writing the song, you just happen to be the person who caught it at that moment. I found that quite interesting.” Even I can see how this approach to songwriting is liberating, allowing artists to capture the raw essence of a moment.
At the mention of Jack White, I’m reminded of a fleeting thought Lewis shared in his documentary, “ordinary is such a remarkable thing, there’s something to be said for that beauty in everyday life.” I ask Lewis what he thinks that something to be said is, given he is, to some degree, in a normalcy deficit.
“I guess, that’s the thing, it’s not my version of ordinary that I’m talking about. It’s the version of ordinary I knew before this all happened. [It’s] where the whole spectrum of human emotion happens,” which is exactly where Lewis tends to connect with his audience—elation, joy, sadness, grief, and love. “We’ve been on tour for the last few weeks, we’ll be on tour for the next four weeks. I love doing this and it’s amazing. [I can’t] wait to get back and just experience a bit of normality and a bit of real life, I suppose,” assuring me he will continue to meet us where we find the purest form of that emotional spectrum.
In these moments of the ordinary, people can truly connect to the universality of humanity’s pain and joy. Lewis’s experience at the Grammy’s, he calls out, highlights the stark contrast between his past and his definition of “real” life, “Me going to the Grammy’s isn’t real. It’s not a real situation. The people I meet there, despite the fact that I’m sure they’re all lovely people—it’s a very set-up thing. You’re having interactions with people, but they very seldom feel like real interactions,” revealing a hard truth other stars are likely hesitant to admit.
“I’m sure everyone else feels the same, it’s weird to feel like a real person in that environment because it’s so far removed from anything anybody who grew up in a relatively normal childhood will understand,” Lewis reveals, “for me, it was wild, and it was hard to feel real emotions. Don’t get me wrong, I felt the emotion of sadness when we lost, and I’m sure if you won, it’s great. But it doesn’t feel as tangible.”
Lewis Capaldi’s brilliance is not only rooted in his talent but his propensity to remain grounded in the midst of success, a continual testament to his authenticity. My time with him revealed a deeper truth about his nature. He doesn’t shy away from his flaws, or present a polished version of himself, but leans into his imperfections and shares them with his fans. In a world where social media often encourages us to present a more refined, commodified version of who we are, Lewis Capaldi’s genuineness is inspiring and paradoxically brings us somewhere closer to what feels real. As the release date of Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent approaches, we can expect he will continue to create a deep sense of connection with us, meeting us in the crevices of our feelings and desires, and taking the piss along the way.
Photographer: Ayanna Allen
