Lewis Capaldi powered through an emotional set on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage as he steadily lost his voice, revealing at the end of his performance that he plans to take some more time off. Earlier this month, the 26-year-old singer cancelled all his other commitments in June ahead of the festival at Worthy Farm to allow himself time to “rest and recover”.
This evening, the Scottish singer treated the crowd of adoring fans to a host of hit tracks from his two chart-topping albums as well as taking his shirt off at one stage. Among the songs on his Glastonbury set list were Forget Me, the lead single off his recently released second studio album, Before You Go and Hold Me While You Wait.
After performing Bruises, he admitted he was having voice issues, telling the crowd: “I’m going to be honest everybody but I’m starting to lose my voice up here, but we’re going to keep going and we’re going to go until the end. I just need you all to sing with me as loud as you can if that’s okay?”
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He continued to apologise to the crowd, and the Eavis family who organise Glastonbury, for his voice starting to go – but the ocean of fans replied by cheering him on and chanting “Oh Lewis Capaldi”. Paula Wickens, 53, who is a project manager from Newbury, and 59-year-old Claire Foley, who is a programmes manager in telecommunications, watched Capaldi’ s performance together.
They said he was “fantastic”, despite the fact that he steadily lost his voice over the course of the set. “I got quite emotional, I really did,” Ms Foley told the PA news agency.
“When he came on to do the penultimate song, and also when the Red Arrows flew over, that was pretty spectacular. I don’t think I’ve been to a concert as exciting as that.”
Ms Wickens added: “I was smiling like a child, my face hurts from smiling so much. He’s done so well and the fact that he even took his T-shirt off for us, I was like ‘wow, oh my God’.”
Ms Wickens said the pair waited for five hours in the “hot” sun to see the performance, and added that if she could speak to Capaldi about his performance, she would first off “give him a hug and say, you blew the whole arena out of here”.
Before his final song, he told the crowd: “I recently took three weeks off just because I’ve been none stop the past year and I wanted to take a wee break from my head for my mental health.
“I wanted to come back and do Glastonbury because it’s obviously so incredible so I just want to thank you all for coming out. I was scared but you’ve really made me feel at ease so thank you very much for that.”
Capaldi added: “I feel like I’ll be taking another wee break over the next couple of weeks so you probably won’t see much of me for the rest of the year maybe even. But when I do come back, when I do see you, I hope you’re all still up for watching.”
He closed his set with his Grammy-nominated track Someone You Loved, telling the crowd “I love you all” and became emotional as they chanted back the lyrics to him when he was struggling to sing some of the notes. Ms Foley said of the announcement: “He was very, very brave and very open and honest and the crowd absolutely loved that.”
The Glaswegian singer, who has previously opened up about his recent diagnosis of Tourette’s, also appeared to experience an increasing number of ticks during the set. Capaldi, who donned a white T-shirt for the set, admitted he had a funky jacket planned for the show but the sun beating down on the festival made it impossible.
Midway through he asked the crowd if they were feeling as hot as he was and following more chanting of his name, he finally took his top off after teasing earlier in the set that he might have to abandon it when he overheated from performing.
