Just months after revealing that he’d been diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, Lewis Capaldi admitted in a recent interview that the disorder could force him to quit performing music altogether.
Capaldi, who catapulted to pop stardom with his 2019 hit “Someone You Loved,” spoke about how living with Tourette’s impacts his career in an April 1st profile for The Times (via Billboard): “My tic is getting quite bad on stage now,” he explained. “I’m trying to get on top of that. If I can’t, I’m fucked. It’s easier when I play guitar, but I hate playing guitar. I know, I’m a walking contradiction.”
Capaldi explained that, ironically, making music is one of the few things that triggers his Tourette’s symptoms, which consist of involuntary sudden body movements and sounds. Case in point: In February, he was performing onstage sans-guitar when his tics began to hinder his singing, and the audience filled in to help him finish “Someone You Loved.”
“Right now, the trade-off is worth it,” the Scottish singer went on. “But if it gets to a point where I’m doing irreparable damage to myself, I’ll quit… I hate hyperbole, but it is a very real possibility that I will have to pack music in.”
Last year, Billie Eilish also spoke publicly about her own experience living and performing with Tourette’s: “What’s funny is so many people have it that you would never know,” she said on an episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman. “A couple artists came forward and said ‘I’ve actually always had Tourette’s.’ And I’m not gonna out them, because they don’t want to talk about it, but that was really interesting to me. I was like, ‘You do?! What?’”
Capaldi’s sophomore album Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent is due out May 19th. He has a hefty schedule of North American and European tour dates lined up this year, and you can grab tickets at StubHub, where orders are 100% guaranteed through StubHub’s FanProtect program. StubHub is a secondary market ticketing platform, and prices may be higher or lower than face value, depending on demand.