Lewis Capaldi opens up about battle with anxiety & Tourette’s diagnosis
Someone You Loved singer Lewis Capaldi has opened up about his battle with anxiety and his diagnosis with Tourette’s syndrome.
The 25-year-old was speaking to Carl Mullan on 2FM Breakfast with Doireann, Donncha and Carl when he spoke candidly about taking a break from music and struggling with having constant panic attacks.
Lewis revealed, “In March 2020, we did an arena tour and I just felt like rubbish during it, like I was having panic attacks every night on stage and I had started doing this mad shoulder switch which I still do now, which I found out since, is Tourette's”.
Capaldi went on to say that it was very difficult for him to not be able to perform in front of his fans because performing live is his favourite bit about being a singer.
“All this stuff was going on and it was making it hard to perform. It was really heartbreaking because playing music live is the only reason I do it”.
Recently, as Lewis has started performing live again, a video of the Before You Go singer went viral because he started crying on stage. Lewis explained that he was overwhelmed with emotion as fans screamed the lyrics of his songs to him.
Even though the performance was amazing, Lewis spoke about being nervous for the gig in case his anxiety got the better of him, or his Tourette’s affected his performance.
“When we played Glasgow, I was- that was like a big thing because I was like, ‘This gigs coming up, this gigs coming up, I hope this doesn’t muck my anxiety up- Tourette’s doesn’t ruin this for me’”.
The Scottish singer also talked about his new single Forget Me. Capaldi had been telling supporters that he wasn’t going to be releasing new music but was “trying to throw people off the scent” ahead of his new single’s launch.
In his own words, Forget Me is about a past relationship of Capaldi’s where the other person was moving on after they broke up, which Lewis felt was ‘unfair’ because he was still hurting after the break-up. “I felt like writing a song about it was an interesting thing to write about”.
