Lewis Capaldi has revealed his BRIT Award-winning smash Someone You Loved was never earmarked as a potential hit.
The piano ballad, which won Best British Single at last night's bash, featured on Capaldi's 2018 Breach EP prior to its inclusion on his double platinum-selling debut album, Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent.
Someone You Loved rose to the UK peak in March 2019 and held firm for seven weeks, going on to top the US Hot 100 in October. Recently returning to the UK Top 10, it was No.7 in last week's chart and has racked up domestic sales of 2,608,514 to date and more than one billion streams on Spotify worldwide.
But speaking recently to Music Week, Capaldi – who was also took the BRIT for Best New Artist – said its impact took everyone on his team by surprise, with previous single Grace initially considered more of a priority.
“Me and my manager had an inkling – not that it was a big single – but that it was the best song on that EP,” said the 23-year-old Scot. “But the label was working on Grace, which radio were really going for. Everyone was like, ‘Grace is the one, and then we’ll go back to Bruises’, which we did after Someone You Loved.
"It’s so weird to think about that now, obviously, but we didn’t think [Someone You Loved] was going to be the big song at all, and it wasn’t ever slated to be. But then we came back after Christmas [2018] and it was flying, so we were like, ‘Fuck it, we’d better give this one a go’.”
Let's not rewrite history: Someone You Loved was not deemed or chosen to be the song that it became
Ted Cockle
Virgin EMI
Virgin EMI president Ted Cockle confirmed Capaldi's version of events.
“We were always rather into Lewis,” he said. “He arrived as a rounded package of interest, decency and humour, so we weren’t actually picking at the bones of songs. We just felt we needed one other song before we were ready to go with Bruises, and then it all changed with with our rollout.
“Let’s not rewrite history: Someone You Loved was not deemed or chosen to be the song that it became. It was a song that we thought was great and was completely on brand for Lewis, but nobody thought it was his defining career record. Sorry to tell the truth!”
