The track is taken from his forthcoming debut album 'Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent'

Lewis Capaldi has opened up about the deeper meaning and inspiration behind his recent Number One single ‘Someone You Loved’.

The track, which is taken from the Scottish singer/songwriter’s upcoming debut album ‘Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent’, hit the top of the UK singles chart on March 1.

Speaking to NME earlier this week, Capaldi expanded on the creative process which led to ‘Someone You Loved’, revealing that it took him six months to write the song.

“A lot of people say that ‘the best songs fall into your lap’ and that they’re the easiest ones to write and take the shortest amount of time: I wholeheartedly disagree with that,” he said. “I think my best songs come from me sitting at a piano, bashing my head against a brick wall for hours and hours on end to get one good melody.

“It’s a long process [between] starting the melodies and having the finished article. I was doing a recording session, and the chords we were working on over the song we were recording [inspired] these other melodies which came to me for the verse [for ‘Someone You Loved’], and I just recorded it on my phone and forgot about it.

“Two months later, I’m sitting in my shed in my back garden with a piano, and I’m bashing my head over and over again to get a chorus and a pre-chorus melody,” he continued. “After that, I took it to the studio with [producers] TMS, and we just bashed it out within half an hour. We working on another song, and I said: ‘I’ve got this other thing.’ And they were just letting me do a stream-of-consciousness sort of thing, and the song was done and ready to go within the space of like, half an hour.”

Capaldi also spoke about why he chose to write “open-ended” lyrics for ‘Someone You Loved’, which the 22-year-old says reflects on both the end of a relationship and a pair of recent family bereavements.

“I don’t think writing open-ended lyrics is necessarily an important part of writing good pop songs,” he remarked. “If you’re writing about what you’re feeling about something, then you’re in good stead. The open-ended lyrics thing was a choice I made because I was so bored of talking about myself. Over the course of making this album, for example, there were a couple of bereavements in my family and stuff like that, and I wanted to write a song that could be applicable to both my relationship ending, which I was writing a lot about, and then this bereavement thing.

“For me, it just came to the point where it was like: ‘Right, let’s write something that’s quite open.’ There were a lot of people coming up to me at my shows and saying that they were able to identify with my songs, and I thought: ‘What if I was just trying to not write something that was insular for once, and just tried to be a bit broader?’ It’s very nice to have people come up to me and have their own reasons for why that song helped them or was important to them. It was nice to see the ways in which people are connecting to it. And it’s been alright, I think!”

Capaldi will set out on a headline UK tour later this year – see the dates below and grabs tickets here.

November
22 – Ulster Hall, Belfast
23 – Academy, Manchester
25 – O2 Academy, Birmingham
26 – O2 Academy, Bristol
28 – O2 Guildhall, Southampton
29 – O2 Academy Brixton, London
30 – Norwich, UEA

December
2 – Rock City, Nottingham
3 – O2 Academy, Sheffield
5 – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
7-8 – O2 Academy, Glasgow