Lewis Capaldi: a one-man antidote to stage-school pop

Britain’s unlikeliest pop superstar is back. On Saturday night, Lewis Capaldi delivered a typically offbeat set of impish humour and sentimental singalongs, at his first concert of 2023. With a roaring belter of a voice and a bawdy Scot’s wit, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter comes over as an unlikely cross between Frankie Miller and Wee Jimmy Krankie.

Mixing laugh out loud jokes and weepily soulful balladry really shouldn’t work, but there can be no argument that it does. There were tears and there was laughter at the sold-out First Direct Leeds Arena, where a 14,000-strong audience chanted the singer’s name like a boisterous football crowd, then roared along with his songs of vulnerability and heartache.

By any prior reckoning of standard music industry strategy, Capaldi is an oddity. In a business that supposedly prizes physical beauty and stage-school charm, he has always been unabashedly overweight and unapologetically odd. Indeed, sporting an unflattering bright white outfit, he looked like he had put on more weight during his absence from the public eye last year. He twitched and grimaced as he performed, which he has previously ascribed to anxiety but commented onstage about a recent diagnosis of Tourette’s Syndrome. That might also go some way to also explaining his sweary outbursts – not just between songs, but sometimes in the middle of them.

“Ahh, f---!” he snapped when he failed to hit the high note during the debut of yet another gloopy, piano ballad of lost love, Wish You the Best. But he carried on singing, blustering through a tender saga of heartbreak while being barely able to contain his own laughter. It should be noted that he was doing this while playing piano suspended on a swaying platform above the crowd. “Gimme a break,” he guffawed. “I’m f---ing twenty foot high! This is one of those things that seems a good idea ’til you get up here. These white trousers will not be white when I get down!”

It is easy to make fun of Capaldi – indeed he does it himself – but it is equally easy to recognise his huge talent and appeal. In our social-media-filtered age, he has found a way to present his authentic character. The songs reveal his inner feelings, the show delivers the rough and rude reality of human complexity – because nobody is ever just one thing. Laughter and tears often go together in life. Capaldi puts them together in music.

It is not subtle, and at this comeback gig it was not always tuneful – Capaldi’s voice sounded rusty and raw. But the loud crowd more than made up for any vocal deficiencies. Capaldi’s 2019 debut, Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent, was Britain’s bestselling album for two years in a row. Given the hearty reception of a fistful of new songs from his forthcoming follow up, Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent, things are only going to get bigger.

Touring the UK until February, returns only for all gigs; lewiscapaldi.com