★★★☆☆
Never before has there been such a disparity between the man and the artist. The son of a fishmonger father and a nurse, the Glaswegian Lewis Capaldi broke through in 2018 to become the people’s balladeer; a soulful roar of a voice recalling Joe Cocker, an ability to write heartfelt mainstream songs that appeal to kids, teenagers and parents alike. His 2019 debut, Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent, was the bestselling album of that year, putting him alongside Ed Sheeran as a writer of hits earnest enough to soundtrack the sad bits on Love Island. Yet none of this appears to reflect his personality whatsoever.
“How are your mothers?” he asked the O2’s audience, which was dominated by teenage girls. “I’m only joking. I’ve never shagged your mothers.” Coming on in a stage costume that consisted of ill-fitting jeans and a T-shirt, he referred to his post-pandemic weight gain by asking: “What’s wrong with a bit of lard, am I right?” And so it went on: burping into the microphone, telling the audience to “please shut the f*** up” when they started singing along, breaking the solemnity of a moment when he played piano for the sonorous semi-classical ballad Lost on You at the top of a giant platform by raising his hands from the keyboard and stating: “I’m not even playing this.”
Capaldi was, in other words, a hilarious anti-pop star: a regular lad only too ready to poke fun at himself, the audience and the fake grandeur of the arena concert situation. The only problem was that it did make the songs, which rarely got above mid-tempo and all seemed to start with the same minor key theme, hard to accept as the outpourings of sincerity they were presumably meant to be taken as.
Every now and then Capaldi’s songwriting talent shone through. Don’t Get Me Wrong was classic tearjerking soul. Before You Go, a tribute to an aunt who killed herself when he was a child, was a timeless universal anthem of the type it is impossible not to be touched by. However, as Capaldi pretended to count all the ticket sales the concert would have produced and said, “It’s a f*** load of cash,” you were left wondering if this characterful, funny guy had simply worked out the quickest way to a mainstream audience’s heart.
O2 Arena, SE10, Saturday
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