AsLewis Capaldipoints out, the “secret” of his brief and ostensibly unannounced set on the Pyramid stage wasn’t terribly well-kept. “I don’t know who’s been fucking telling everyone,” he shrugs, but the word seemed to be out before Glastonbury even began. When the Guardian interviewed festival-goers queueing as the gates opened on Wednesday, several listed him as the artist they were most looking forward to seeing this year. The crowd he draws is vast: both a reminder of how successful his first two albums were – his debut was the bestselling UK album of 2019and2020 – and of the emotional charge that his appearance carries. He last played Glastonbury in 2023: it was supposed to be a return to live performances after he had to cancel a series of gigs amid struggles with his mental health and Tourette syndrome. Instead, his voice gave out, and Capaldi subsequently retreated from public view.
He says he’s “easing into this” but, it has to be said, he looks noticeably less anxious two years on. There are no signs of the physical tics that beset him during the promotion of his second album, Broken By Desire to Be Heavenly Sent, and his voice is as roaring as it ever was. There’s definitely less of what Capaldi used to call “the blather” – the reliably hilarious and foul-mouthed between-song chat that frequently used to last longer than the actual songs – partly because of time constraints, and partly, he says, because he’s worried that he’s going to cry. When he does try to talk he’s frequently drowned out by the sound of the crowd singing his name to the tune of the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army.
From the opening notes of Before You Go, the crowd sing along to every song he plays, only ceasing when he performs a new song, Survive, that’s very clearly inspired by the events of the last two years: “I’m going to get up again, I’m going to get up and try if it’s the last thing I do.” It’s slow-paced, soaring-chorused business as usual, but whatever other advances have taken place in pop since Capaldi absented himself, the success of Alex Warren, Benson Boone et al. proves there’s still a substantial space for earnest, melancholy young men with acoustic guitars.
He ends, inevitably, with Someone You Loved, which provokes a crowd sing-along that makes all the previous sing-alongs seem like rehearsals: as he predicted, Capaldi’s eyes start to brim. “Second time’s the charm, eh?” he nods: it would require a very hard heart indeed not to be moved yourself.