Behind the Success of Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved
Introduction
- Topics discussed in the essay etc.
Paragraph one
- Who is Lewis Capaldi?
- Musical background – 2 prior EP’s
- Success so far as a musician
- First single released in 2017 – Bruises, followed by two more – Lost On You + Fade
Paragraph two
- Behind the song – Someone You Loved
- How/when it was created
- Co-writers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Someone_You_Loved
Paragraph Three
- Promotion
- Charts success
https://www.officialcharts.com/search/singles/someone-you-loved/
https://www.billboard.com/artist/lewis-capaldi/chart-history/hsi/
https://songstats.com/artist/y9zbi1qv/lewis-capaldi?source=spotify
Conclusion
- Was ‘Someone You Loved’ the main contribution towards Lewis’ success?
Notes
- Someone You Loved
- Released on 8th November 2018 as part of Lewis’ ‘Breach’ EP. Then re-released on 19th May 2019 within his debut album ‘Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent’
- Spent 7 consecutive weeks at number one
- Best selling single of 2019
- Received song of the year award 2020 at the Brits, nominated for song of the year in the Grammys 2020
- as of 2021, it is the 4th most streamed song on Spotify with around 2.3 billion streams
- Took over 6 months to write
- Writers: Lewis Capaldi, Samuel Romans
- Producers: Thomas Barnes, Peter Kelleher, Benjamin Kohn
- “A lot of people say that the best sings fall into your lap…I disagree. I think my best songs have come from sitting at a piano bashing my head against a brick wall for hours to get a good melody.”
- Open ended lyrics – he was bored of talking about himself and his past relationship. He wanted the song to have the meaning of “someone who was a constant but no longer is”, whether that be romantically, platonically, or within grief and bereavement.
- Official Charts
- Peak position: 1
- Weeks spent in top 100: 180
- Weeks spent in top 75: 121
- Weeks spent in top 40: 69
- Weeks spent in top 20: 42
- Weeks spent in top 10: 31
- Longest running UK top 10 single of all time by a UK artist
- Billboard Charts
- Spent 54 weeks on the chart, peaking at number 1 for 3 weeks, made its debut on the chart on 25/11/19
- Album – Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent – biggest selling album of 2019 and 2020
- Artist streams and stats: Spotify
- 30.4 million monthly listeners
- 10.3 million followers
- #106 global rank
- 22.4k playlists
- Song streams and stats
- 132 million listeners reached via 9044 playlists on Spotify
- 1.88 million TikTok videos to sound
- 3.85 billion TikTok views to sound
- Zach Sang interview
- First performed on stage at 4 years old on a family holiday
- Learned guitar at 9
- He was writing his own songs from 10/11
- His dream was to perform live like his favourite artists (Green Day, Queen etc.)
- Believes his rise to stardom was because he wrote his own songs from personal experiences, to fit his own voice, people gravitate towards him/his music because he embodies the story
- Steven Bartlett interview
- Social media – was told that to make a good impression, it is best to stay mysterious online, so he didn’t use social media for a while. However, he began using it to promote gigs he was doing
- Really started using social media after his first two EPs didn’t do great
- Posting content he and his friends found funny/enjoyed
- Accidentally created a brand for himself by just being genuine and having a laugh. Although this isn’t necessarily the guided was to promote yourself and your music, it worked/still works fantastically for him
- He didn’t want to be a polished pop star, as he wanted to be his true authentic self. This view means he becomes more relatable for an audience, as he is forming a completely different reality from his music
- Social Media
- Takes a very unusual approach to marketing, majority is done on social media platforms. He doesn’t take the traditional route that a lot of other artists do, and he doesn’t seem to have much control taken away from him in terms of how he ‘should’ present himself, as many artists/bands usually go through a lot of media training and are told to avoid many of the tactics used by Lewis within his campaign. As presented on his social media, he jokes about wanting to be “taken seriously” as a musician. He recalls in an interview with Zach Sang that the reason his debut album is titled ‘Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent’ is because he “thought it was funny” and so he could be seen as criticising it before any critic/newspaper would.
sources
https://www.heart.co.uk/showbiz/celebrities/lewis-capaldi-famous-achievements-peter-related/
https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/the-official-top-40-biggest-songs-of-2019__28072/
https://www.brits.co.uk/news/brits-2020-winners