Lewis Capaldi joined Scott Mills on his Radio 2 show to chat about his Netflix documentary and his new single Wish You the Best.
Lewis chats about how he now has two homes but his mum still does his washing
Lewis I have a house now, I’m no longer in Whitburn, I am in Glasgow and I did purchase a little place down here (London). I’m making myself sound non relatable!
Scott - Two homes who do you think you are Rod Stewart!
Scott - in this new documentary I just saw you were loading the dishwasher!
Lewis- loading the dishwasher, doing my undies, rubbing my clothes together in the hope they’ll be clean, I do things for myself
Scott – It’s the most laundry I’ve seen in a documentary
Lewis – Thank you I’m glad you said that, Sean Mendes might have had his tighty whities in his of course, but I do my bit. Nowadays my mum does my laundry because I’ve shrunk a lot of my clothes
Lewis and Scott chat about the documentary and how it’s upsetting in places and how his Mum and Dad are the new Simon Cowell
Lewis – yes it’s a big box that needs unpacking
Scott – but it does show you in a different way, and some was a little bit of a struggle to watch
Lewis – I know 100% when I watched the first draft of it I thought do I die at the end of this because its so depressing in places.
Scott – At least your songs are happy
Lewis- yes at least my songs are happy, it’s weird, I think you really see where the songs come from and that’s something that hasn’t been done before. I never expected it to be as vulnerable, not to use the buzz words all celebs use plugging a documentary flogging something but it’s quite intimate.
Scott – the doc features never seen before footage of you working on your second album One bit where you play a new song to your mum and dad in the kitchen and your mum goes nah, it’s not one of your best.
Lewis – My mom and dad have all of a sudden become these muso’s, my mum is a nurse and my dad is a fishmonger and now all of a sudden they’re like Simon Cowell, it’s mental I don’t tell my dad what halibut to sell, I don’t tell my mother, I don’t know what she does as a job but I wouldn’t come over and tell her how to do it. But at the end of the day its quite good at the end of the day those are the people that are listening to the radio and who are going to hear your music
Lewis tells Scott how picking songs for the new album was like a lottery and who he plays his songs to first
Lewis – it is (like a Lottery), with varying degrees of success, the only way to do it for me, I’m sure some people say it’s the songs that speak to me the most to me etc etc for me its songs I can listen too or I still don’t hate by the end of it. Because you spend so much time with them you weed out the ones that are useless after a while, because you’re like that’s really annoying and I am really bored of that. When you write a new song you thing it’s the best thing in the world you think you’ve written bohemian Rhapsody but then you start to listen a bit more and write more and you realise that actually wasn’t as good as I thought
Scott – who do you plays songs too
Lewis – My Mum and Dad, my friend Conor who’s in the LF system, he’s my friend from school. So I send them to him, he was the first person to ever tell me, in 2017/2018, he was the first person to tell me Someone You Love would be No1
Scott asks Lewis about the email Elton John sent talking about imposter syndrome and Lewis says he still feels the same way but we’re all blagging it someway
Lewis – easy for Elton John to say (not to have imposter syndrome), it was actually really really lovely, it was one of these things where, I think I got the email the night of the Brits Awards 2020, the one where it was all a bit weird… It was really nice to get something like that and get some reassurance because I had been telling Ed (Sheeran) about it and he spoke to Elton
Scott - Do you still feel like you’re blagging it?
Lewis – yes more so now than ever, I think its ok in a way, unless you’re an Elton John or a Sheeran, we are all blagging it, do you know what I mean, I know people who are supremely more talented than I am who have never get the chance that I have had, so I think there is an element of blagging in anything I don’t mean just being a famous singer/sex symbol like me, I’ve got friends in managerial roles in office jobs that are now feel like they’re blagging it, but it makes us human and who we are.
Lewis chats about the meaning behind his new single and how he’s happy in his relationship
Scott - Wish You the Best new single what’s that about?
Lewis – it’s about someone moving on and that feeling where you know it’s the best thing for that person but you want to say to them and all you say is good luck I’m really happy for you but actually you are dying inside and want to tell them all the things you miss about them and why they should stay with you, so just a really happy song for the summer.
Scott – are you in rush to settle down?
Lewis – I have a girlfriend and that’s going really well, I am happy chappy, she’s a lovely lady I feel good about everything
Lewis talks about dealing with Tourettes and panic attacks
Scott – it did break my heart to see you struggling in the show with the anxiety and panic attacks and the ticking
Lewis – it is (painful) I’m having a good day today I haven’t twitched that much, I still do that I still tick quite a lot but it’s one of these things. What’s mad is that there is no real treatment for Tourette’s so I’m in a position where I can cancel a whole day of work if I’m too stressed or my anxiety it too bad. For other people it must be so much worse, they don’t have the luxury I have (being able to take day off)
Scott – Panic attacks the worst, I had them aged 15 – 16 to the extent I couldn’t finish my GCSEs, and you think you’re never going to feel normal
Lewis- Yes you feel I will never feel normal again. I’ll never get rid of these, I had multiple panic attacks on Saturday evening, I went out for a few beers on the Friday, I always feel anxious after drinking but I’d really hammered it after a long time of not boozing and my mum had to come down to calm me down, lie in bed with me and I was having panic attack after panic attack and the whole week after I felt off.
