‘Fuck me, this is high.” Lewis Capaldi and his piano are sitting atop a gigantic screen at London’s O2 Arena. The 25-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter is in the middle of performing his multi-platinum ballad Bruises and obviously out of his comfort zone. As the 20,000-strong crowd begins to cheer, he scoffs. “The song is not finished,” he scolds. “Please shut up.”
This might sound like a horrifying crowd interaction, but for Capaldi’s fans it’s part of the appeal. Ever since he scored a surprise mega-hit with 2018’s Grammy-nominated Someone You Loved – an Adele-style heartbreak anthem that sat at No 1 in the UK for seven weeks – Capaldi has cut an incongruous figure. Although his music often crosses the line into boilerplate balladry, signposting its emotional cues with rasping yelps and forlorn pianos, Capaldi himself has developed a reputation as the class clown of British pop.
