Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent - Lewis Capaldi (2019)

Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent is the debut album by Scottish singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi. A man that is famed not only for having the best-selling album of the last five years but also for his public persona. Capaldi can be seen making a fool of himself daily on Twitter and is just as self-deprecating as the album title suggest. Capaldi was born in Glasgow and began learning guitar at a young age. By age 18, Capaldi had got himself a manager (after he released some music on Soundcloud) and had been part of a three-date tour in association with The Scottish Music Centre in Glasgow. In 2017 Capaldi released his debut EP Bloom which featured break-out song ‘Bruises’. ‘Bruises’ amassed over 25 million listens on Spotify, all before he was eventually signed by Virgin EMI later that year. In between Bloom and his debut album, Capaldi supported the likes of Rag’n’Bone Man, Sam Smith and Kodaline as well as releasing a second EP Breach in November 2018. Breach featured the track ‘Someone You Loved’ which had charted in 29 countries by the time 2019 rolled around. This was just in time for his debut album to be a hit success and to win two BRIT Awards and a Grammy nomination.

Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent, all in all, is not all that it is cracked up to be. The BRIT Awards flatter it as a project. ‘Someone You Loved’ has over 1 billion plays on Spotify, so it is hard for an awards board to deny such commercial success. The album contains twelve tracks, all of which follow the same formula of Capaldi whining about heartbreak, a slow tempo and an intro and melody that is carried by a minor piano sequence. Of course, ‘Somebody You Loved’ is a strong track and very successful but feels undermined in the context of the album. ‘One’, ‘Hold Me While You Wait’ and ‘Somebody You Loved’ are all very similar tracks; if it was not for the incessant radio play ‘Somebody You Loved’

receives I would not know the difference until the chorus. Another problem with Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent is that five of the songs that feature, also feature on Capaldi’s two prior EP’s. This is not a case of an artist having an early version of a song on a mixtape; it is the same recording of the song. The songs include ‘Someone You Loved’ and ‘Bruises’ (as I aforementioned) as well as ‘Grace’, the opening track. Yes, they are big songs, but did five previously released tracks need to be rereleased? One track: sure. Two tracks: fine. Five tracks: come on.

Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent feels like a pop album of the modern-day – focus on the singles and worry less about the album. There are nine or ten tracks on this record that could have been “the single”, it just so happened that there is one enormous single and four or five big singles. The other songs on the album that are not “the single” are just mundane or, in the case of ‘One’, sound like ‘Somebody You Loved (Part 2)’. It is not like this album is a travesty to music; however, it just feels very repetitive, even in moments where it feels like a change is imminent. Take ‘Maybe’ for example, the verse sounds a bit more upbeat and like it is leading to a drop. The pre-chorus builds the same hype with some textured backing vocals, but, Capaldi lets us all down by grovelling through the chorus. Even fellow whiner George Ezra manages to sound enthusiastic on Budapest, so why can’t Lewis Capaldi on at least one track.

The stand-out tracks for me on this record are ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ and ‘Grace’. Special mentions go to ‘Somebody You Loved’ for its commercial success and ‘Maybe’ for trying to be a bit jollier. ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ is the only song I would say I enjoyed; it has a hard-rock ballad energy with some powerful vocal fry in the chorus. It is full of emotion and feels raw, not just sad, which is where I believe Capaldi missed the mark on this album. ‘Grace’ is the opening track to the album and in a way sounds like every other song. However, it is the first track you hear, so the repetitiveness has not set in. ‘Grace’ tries to be slightly more upbeat, like ‘Maybe’, and is very layered through clever vocal multitracking which fills the space in a relatively simple track. Aside from these two tracks, the best part of the album is the production, but that is expected of pop records. The production on the vocals suits Capaldi’s sometimes coarse vocals and pushes them to the front of the track, so he is the focus. Although I did not think highly of this record, I enjoyed the odd song more in the context of the album that I do when I hear the same song on the radio. The album gives the songs a setting and reason to be slow and whiney. Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent is commercially successful and there is no doubting that. Capaldi’s music has clearly resonated with a lot of people, even if much of the album is the same. Imagine what he could do if he released an album that was critically acclaimed as well as commercially successful. The sky is the limit.