‘A global pandemic is only in the top three weird things that have happened to me in the last three years,” Lewis Capaldi notes at the start of this generically made but nonetheless startling Netflix documentary about his rise. After years strumming in Scottish pubs and clubs, his raw piano ballad Bruises went viral and lift-off was vertical: his debut album became the biggest seller in the UK in both 2019 and 2020, and its single Someone You Loved, a seven-week chart topper in the UK, made him the first Scottish solo artist to reach US No 1 since Sheena Easton in 1981. An endearing goofball on social media, Capaldi won even more fans by puncturing influencer culture with his blithely unglamorous image, but his japes disguised a man suffering from terrible anxiety, panic attacks and a shoulder twitch that would later be diagnosed as a Tourette’s symptom.
These highs and lows are documented by Joe Pearlman, using the same televised-therapy approach he used to great effect for his film Bros: After the Screaming Stops. He follows Capaldi, now massively famous, to a studio in his Whitburn family home where he starts work on his second album. There’s a flash of typical Capaldi wit as he’s recognised by a woman sat in an optician’s far across the street: “You’re cured!”
Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Billie Eilish and George Ezra are among the singers who have by now made this kind of soul-baring shaky-cam documentary into a cliche; in a social media age, pop stars must broadcast their trauma to stay relatable rather than keep it to themselves, and so they might as well do it on their own terms. Capaldi is alive to how constructed everything is, telling Pearlman he can finish a scene of him packing for an LA trip with a shot of a plane flying overhead – which Pearlman then does.
It’s an amusing moment, but Pearlman isn’t always self-aware. At one of Capaldi’s lowest ebbs, his shoulder twitches violently and he puts his head in his hands as he talks desperately about his hopes for the new album. Pearlman follows up with jump-scare edits of screaming fans soundtracked with screeching ambient noise, a tacky and emotionally manipulative choice for a moment that should be calm, and dignifying Capaldi.
Nevertheless, Pearlman clearly does put Capaldi, his family and his sizeable supporting cast of pals and industry bods at ease, resulting in some astonishingly frank scenes. It may be that his manager Ryan Walter is generally a supportive colleague and astute businessman, but not on the basis of a horrible exchange here, as Capaldi plays him a new song. Walter’s first question: “Is it a hit single?” Musical director Aiden Halliday looks at him like he’s defecated on his car bonnet. Capaldi worries the new one is bit similar to Someone You Loved. “And what? That’s a good thing ... people love stuff that sounds the same as it,” Walter says consolingly, the risk-averse, creatively-redundant major label mindset defined. But it gets worse still, as Walter warns Capaldi: “I’ve definitely put all my eggs in one basket ... and [if you] fuck it up ...” As a whole retinue of people realise how much money they can make, Pearlman shows the atmosphere of expectation that forms a dark cloud over Capaldi.
Thankfully, even when Capaldi is surrounded and cowed by bronzed executives, you know he has the talent and emotional acuity of an artist, qualities these industry functionaries can’t really grasp. His overlords have sent him to LA to write with two very capable songwriters in Dan Nigro and Amy Allen, but this is shit-at-a-wall creativity and Capaldi, who wrote Someone You Loved on his own in his parents’ house, knows it: “It just doesn’t work like that … Do I even know what I like, now?”
That second album is coming out in May and the six-man co-write of lead single Forget Me suggests Capaldi didn’t exactly go back to first principles. But towards the end of the film he is shown launching the single – soon another No 1 – in high spirits, in between working out and eating microwaveable plastic containers of green veg. Pearlman shows that Capaldi has become even more of a celebrity cliche, the star who’s been on a journey and come out the other side – but you imagine Capaldi, with his indefatigable wryness, is all too aware of that.
• Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now is released on 5 April on Netflix.
