Play Singer Lewis Capaldi began to buckle under the pressure of expectations during the filming of this Netflix documentary
Singer Lewis Capaldi began to buckle under the pressure of expectations during the filming of this Netflix documentary
Streaming documentaries featuring pop stars baring their souls about the pressures of fame and their struggles with mental health have become a genre in themselves lately.
But you’re unlikely to see another one quite as raw and unguarded as Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now (Netflix).
At one point, Capaldi is packing for a trip. He picks a couple of pairs of his underpants up off the bedroom floor, sniffs them and declares: “I think they’re clean.” You won’t catch many (or any) other top-selling artists doing that in front of a camera.
It’s one of the lighter moments in a film that gradually journeys deeper and deeper into the darkness before eventually re-emerging on a hopeful note.
Thanks to Ed Sheeran, with his busker’s shirts and jeans, ordinary blokes — or at least ordinary blokes with massive record company marketing muscle behind them — are what sell best these days.
Blandness is the new rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t know if Capaldi’s music is bland. I haven’t heard enough of it, beyond a song or two on the car radio, to have an opinion. He has a belter of a voice, that much is obvious, and from what we see here, a sharp wit, a self-deprecating sense of humour and a charming lack of vanity or pretentiousness.
That doesn’t come as a surprise. He’s from Glasgow, where, as any local will obligingly tell you, “you’ll no get away with that sh**e here, pal!” But he’s definitely as ordinary blokey as ordinary blokes get. He still hangs out in the pub with the friends he had at school. “They’re really good at making sure you’re not a c**t,” he says.
Director Joe Pearlman mined unexpected pop-doc gold in his great film Bros: After the Screaming Stops, about faded pop idols the Goss twins. That was often brutally, blisteringly honest. It was also hilarious in parts.
How I’m Feeling Now is an altogether more troubling piece of work. It’s hard to watch at times and feels too intrusive. Pearlman followed Capaldi for two years, starting in 2020, when the Covid pandemic was raging, as he moved between his family home in Whitburn, West Lothian, London and Los Angeles.
By then, the young man who’d strummed on his first guitar when he was just five (we see him getting it for Christmas in a home video) had become a global star, his debut album and its singles hitting number one in the UK and US.
After years of being driven by his father Mark to and from gigs “in sh**e pubs where no one was listening”, one of his songs, Bruises, went viral and suddenly everything changed. “It’s very bizarre,” says his mother Carole. “It’s as if you’re watching a movie.”
Now the pressure is building to get the second album out there. The process is going slowly. There are calls from record company flunkies, meetings with other songwriters, brainstorming sessions with his manager.
This kind of pressure is not something Capaldi needs. He’s long suffered from anxiety, crises of confidence and panic attacks. When he gets one of those, he says, “It feels like I’m going insane. Completely disconnected from reality. I can’t breathe. I can’t feel my breath going in.”
He hit crisis point 18 months earlier, during a Wembley gig near the end of his tour. He had to stop mid song. Mark bolted from his seat and onto the stage to be with him. He’s also tormented by impostor syndrome. Not even a lovely, supportive email from Elton John, which he reads out, can quell it.
When all these troubles collide, Capaldi’s left shoulder begins to twitch. As the documentary progresses, it grows steadily worse. Near the end, the twitch is virtually a convulsion, accompanied by a variety of tics and jerks.
With the agreement of all parties, writing and recording of the album was paused for four months to allow him to concentrate on his mental health.
The filming pauses too, picking up four months later. Capaldi has been diagnosed with a form of Tourette’s. Therapy seems to be helping to bring it under control.
There’s good news: his new single has gone to number one and he’s well enough to play his first show in three years at the O2 Arena. All you can do is wish this ordinary likeable, down-to-earth bloke well, and hope he remains well.
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