Success can be brutal: Lewis Capaldi’s docu-film

“Meet a singer-songwriter whose debut album sold more than ten million copies. More than a million tickets sold for his concerts, starting from clubs to get to stadiums and major festivals around the world. And he did all this while remaining himself,” says the speaker, announcing the entrance of Lewis Capaldi during a keynote. Not even the time to sit on the armchair on stage, in front of the audience, for the singer-songwriter immediately begins to make shots, to have heavy tics. THE symptoms of Tourette’s Syndrome which the voice of “Before you go” revealed to suffer from last year are shown to viewers from the first frames of “

Lewis Capaldi: How I’m feeling now”, the docu-film dedicated to the red Scottish singer-songwriter just released on Netflix. Directed by Bafta winner Joe Pearlman – already working on a special for the twentieth anniversary of the “Harry Potter” saga – the film is not about Lewis Capaldi’s fight against Tourette’s Syndrome, although this last aspect is central. How much, rather, of effects that popularity has had on a provincial boy, catapulting him from his bedroom to the top of the world rankings in a matter of monthswithout even giving him time to successfully take measures.

“Mine is a race against time to improve my mental state”, says Capaldi in one of the most touching passages of the docu-film. It doesn’t look like the one who in the archival videos of four years earlier said, self-confidently: “From now on I will start climbing to the top of stardom”. It was 2017, the year of “Bruises”, the very first hit: 2.4 million copies sold in the UK alone. A year later she would arrive”Someone you loved”: nothing would ever be the same in Lewis’s life. “I used to come here with my friends and we always got drunk. There were no plaques or platinum records hanging on the walls.”

, he confesses to the cameraman, taking him to the bedroom where “Someone you loved” was born. “Hold me while you wait” and “Before you go” in 2019 consolidate its success, the album “Divinely uninspired to a hellish extent” is confirmed a global success with 10 million copies sold worldwide. One of the most sparkling international pop debuts in the streaming era: “Someone you loved” with 562 million streams is even named “the most streamed song ever in the United Kingdom”. But it’s not all gold – or platinum – that glitters.

The focus of “Lewis Capaldi: How I’m feeling now” is not the 26-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter’s rise to fame. The title says it: the docu-film focuses on Lewis Capaldi’s present, recounting the impact of success on his life of a boy who didn’t exactly have the phisique du rol of a pop star, neither physically nor mentally (despite the gym with years of apprenticeship in Scottish clubs: “I’ve played in shitty pubs where nobody gives a damn about you”, he says). A success that overwhelmed him. And she crashed it. The tics related to Tourette’s Syndrome, shown here and there throughout the documentary, are only the most evident symptom of a profound discomfort: “I’m not sure of my skills as an author and my insecurity has increased with success – confesses he, who reveals that he also suffers from imposter syndrome, grappling with writing the ideal successor to “Divinely uninspired to a hellish extent” – when the first album goes so well you think: ‘Can I do another one like this?’.

So you are always in tension. You can be the best for a year maybe. Time flies. It took me forever for the first and just a year for the second”. .He will also have a millionaire bank account, but Capaldi hides a pain inside himself. There is something that is broken and he wonders if it will ever be possible to fix it. She sings it in the audition of a song: “Can’t even begin to explain / this all too well familiar pain / it comes and it goes / and it leaves me alone in the end”.

Phone calls from managers and record companies are like disturbing bell tolls alerting Lewis Capaldi: time is running out. Not just the one for disc delivery. It is also his time, which is in danger of running out: “We’ll be able to say that you’ve had your moment”, his mother consoles him in a scene from the docu-film, while Lewis stares at the sky, helpless as the tics make him shrug and throw his head back slightly. “Let’s talk about deadlines. As you well know, we want a first in the standings next year. When will what you are writing now be ready?

”, urges manager Ryan Walter.

“This documentary began with the intention of following the creative process of the ‘difficult second album’, but ends up being a portrait of how the pressures that follow success affect the life of a young artist, also exploring one of the fundamental themes of our time: mental health,” he explains.Sam Bridger, head of Pulse Films, the production company behind the film. Adds Bridger: “It’s an unfiltered entry into the life of one of the biggest stars on the planet and a testament to the courage of Lewis and his team in inviting us into their world.”

At one point Lewis packs up and leaves the United Kingdom: heading to Los Angeles, to work together with some American pop hitmakers on the songs that will be part of the new record. The docu-film comes just over a month after the album’s release date, which was announced: “Broken by desire to be heavenly sent” will arrive on May 19th. The premises are good: the singles “Forget me” And “Pointlessgave the Scottish singer-songwriter his third and fourth UK number one hits respectively, a feat the latter achieved by artists such as Whitney Houston, Cher, One Direction, Jay-Z, Pharrell and Justin Timberlake.

The driving idea behind the creation of the new album, says Lewis in the docu-film, is simple but powerful: to do exactly the same thing as the first album. .No loops, artifices or feats with music stars: an honest and direct record, exactly like the first one. It is by returning to work with the same collaborators of the debut album that Lewis Capaldi finds the right balance: “I didn’t want to create a new sound or reinvent myself. The songs I wanted to write were emotional songs, about love and loss. Much of this record was composed with the same people I worked with on my first album: TMS, Phil Plested, Nick Atkinson and Edd Hollowat created most of the record. There is at least one of them in almost every song”.

His new tour, which will also see him as the protagonist in Italy with a single date, the May 31, 2023 at the Mediolanum Forum in Milansold out in Great Britain and will also take him to perform at the Reading & Leeds festivals and Glastonbury as a headliner. Tourette’s Syndrome is always there. A life partner now: “For now, it’s worth it. But if it gets to a point where I’m doing myself irreparable damage, I’ll stop – he said in an interview with the Sunday Times – I hate hyperbole, but it is a very real possibility that I will have to put the music away”.