Two of pop’s biggest stars are about to go head-to-head in the album charts. And right now they’re competing for streaming eyeballs too. Netflix has a warts-and-all documentary about Lewis Capaldi, How I’m Feeling Now, in which you get to see the man behind the mic. And Disney Plus has an equally candid documentary about Ed Sheeran, The Sum of it All, in which you, er, get to see the man behind the mic.
The documentaries do of course differ – not least because the Sheeran series is a four-parter broken into individual themed episodes, while the Capaldi one is a one-off – but at heart they’re very similar. Both documentaries offer lots of behind-the-scenes filming and old phone footage to delight fans, with highlights including Sheeran performing with Stormzy and Eminem, as well as Capaldi’s cheerful clowning. But while pop stardom is the starting point, it’s not really the story. In fact, the Sheeran documentary is noticeably light on full songs until well into the third of its four episodes.
