Lewis Capaldi’s 5-star Wythenshawe Park debut saw a pitch-perfect 16-song set list featured all the favourites, including Someone You Loved, Grace, Forget Me, Heavenly Kind of State of Mind and Hollywood
With his trademark irreverent humour and powerful vocals, Lewis Capaldi has finally made his Wythenshawe Park debut and quickly proved his show was worth the three-year wait.
Telling the crowd it was ‘great to be back’ in Manchester, the Glaswegian singer-songwriter’s set offered up all the tracks fans had turned out to see, bouncing from old classics to his newest offerings. The pitch-perfect 16-song set list featured all the favourites from his two albums and handful of EPs, including Someone You Loved, Grace, Forget Me, Heavenly Kind of State of Mind and Hollywood.
Between tracks, Capaldi ribbed the crowd and, in his typical fashion, took the piss out of himself. He declared his song catalogue ‘the perfect soundtrack for being depressed to’ – and when you take it at lyric level alone – you can perhaps be forgiven for agreeing with him.
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One of his songs is literally about his death, after all.
But Capaldi’s seemingly happy go lucky nature, always laughing, always joking, often at his own expense, means you can’t help but feel positive about life when listening to him. And this set the tone for his entire show as he headlined Saturday’s Live from Wythenshawe Park show.
No song embodies this quite as perfectly as Capaldi’s defiant 2025 hit Survive, a personal favourite I’ve returned to time and time again when times have been tough and which came as part of his encore. When you’re standing among tens of thousands of people bellowing out the lyrics ‘I swear to God I’ll survive, if it kills me to’, you can’t help but feel like, with the right level of stubbornness, you can take on the world.
The theme of the song was reflected in some of the night’s serious notes as well, though, with Capaldi speaking of his struggles with his mental and physical health. He had to cancel a previous performance in Wythenshawe Park in 2023, along with other tour dates, because of this.
The decision followed an emotional performance at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2023 where he struggled with his voice and experienced increased Tourette’s syndrome tics.
He told the Manchester crowd: “I had to take a break from music a couple of years ago because mentally and physically I wasn’t doing very well, but I’m really glad to say I feel great now and I feel happy. So, feeling great now, but unfortunately this is a song about my death, so please enjoy.”
Before launching into the emotional track On The Day That I Die.
Capaldi opened his set by promising gig-goers a ‘fun’ night before going on to quite resoundingly deliver. He perfectly blended the best of his music with a level of entertainment and interaction few performers manage quite so effortlessly.
At one point, lights cut to a dark and sombre close up of Capaldi performing an intense guitar riff, before, with his characteristic cheekiness, he stuck his tongue out at the camera.
Ever the master of crowd engagement, he gave fans plenty of opportunities to belt out his tracks with him, regularly turning the mic towards them – a challenge everyone present happily took up with gusto. At one point, he also dipped into a few verses of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream, delivering a version that was, frankly, better than the original.
It seemed like every Scot in Manchester had turned out to see and support their countryman, with Scottish accents and flags in abundance in the crowd. Cries of ‘Glasgow’ echoed across the field at regular intervals.
The gig kicked off two support acts to warm up gig-goers. Quiet Man played a thoughtful set, before wowing the audience with a beautiful rendition of One Day Like This by Greater Manchester’s-own Elbow, acknowledging band’s the local significance.
Manchester-favourite Loyle Carner was up next to rev up the crowd with his unique mixture of hiphop and poetic rap. Touching moments saw the London-born singer perform a track he sings to his children at bedtime and speak on emotional openness and his desire to be a better father to his son.
As the night came to the end, Capaldi thanked the ‘beautiful’ Manchester audience before leaving fans with something to get excited about – the promise of new music to come. With three gigs to go, he said he would be back in the studio at the end of his tour working up a ‘brand new album’.
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