Indeed, Capaldi is on sufficiently good terms with the ex-girlfriend about whom he wrote most of his songs that, as he worked on them, he’d send them to her to see what she thought. But Capaldi describes breakups the way they happen in real life - not necessarily “an explosion of trauma,” he said, but the sad, relatable experience of two people slowly drifting apart. What’s striking about “Someone You Loved” - and about the rest of Capaldi’s impressive album, which he made quickly after an early single took off on streaming services - is that his stories often resist the type of emotional grandstanding for which his voice sets you up.

“There’s just not that many people out there who can do that right now,” said Malay, who’s also worked with Smith and Frank Ocean. In the weathered grain of his singing - rich with echoes of Otis Redding and Daryl Hall - you can hear a performer capable of turning pain into beauty. Where artists like Eilish and Khalid do “this super-cool kind of mumbly, vibey thing,” as one of his producers, Malay, put it, Capaldi uses his powerful chest voice to reach the cheap seats. His meal ticket of an instrument, though, sets him apart as much as his attraction to classic arrangements does. Like many in his generation, Capaldi, whose aspiring rock star of an older brother led him to start playing music in grade school, was discovered by a manager after he posted homemade recordings online. Yet the ascent of such an old-fashioned tune feels especially remarkable today given how quickly pop has been moving of late 17-year-old Billie Eilish was virtually unknown when Adele cleaned up at the 2017 Grammys, and now she’s even more of an awards frontrunner than Capaldi is thanks to songs that pull freely from rap.

(Worth noting: Barnett ran Columbia Records during Adele’s breakout, then moved to Capitol just in time to shepherd Smith to stardom.)

20, has a proven historical weakness for this type of nakedly sentimental material, particularly when it comes from young Brits with show-stopping voices - see Ed Sheeran, Adele and Sam Smith, all of whom have won song of the year with tunes that might have been composed decades ago. The Recording Academy, which will announce nominations on Nov. Capaldi himself is tipped for a best new artist nod. Now “Someone You Loved” - the key track from Capaldi’s debut album, “Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent” - is in the running for January’s Grammy Awards, with music-industry insiders speculating about its chances of being nominated for song and record of the year. to present Capaldi with a plaque commemorating the song’s latest sales achievement. “Look at the records around it on Spotify, globally or in the U.S.,” said Capitol Records Group chairman and CEO Steve Barnett, who traveled to Boston from L.A. 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100, propelled by countless radio spins and more than 750 million streams on YouTube and Spotify - highly unusual numbers for a stripped-down ballad at a moment when the Top 40 is crowded with busy hip-hop tracks by the likes of Post Malone and Travis Scott. “I’m like, I need to get Trippie Redd on this just to spice it up.”Īn unvarnished confessional with a yearning sing-along melody, “Someone You Loved” spent seven weeks at No. “And every night I always look around at that point hoping no one heckles me: ‘You’re doing a good job of it!’” mock-hollered the singer, who looks like a slightly doughier Paul McCartney circa “Rubber Soul.” Dressed in a T-shirt and rumpled windbreaker, he ran a hand through his tousled hair and grinned. Over breakfast in Boston that morning, he’d said there’s a section in the middle of his live show in which he does three slow songs right in a row the third, “ Headspace,” has a lyric that pleads, “Sing me a song and send me to sleep.”

Adele to be loved