Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent Tracklist
Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent is Lewis Capaldi’s long-awaited debut album. Almost all of the songs deal with a breakup, or “sexy sad bangers” as Lewis puts it. The exceptions are “Grace” (the only happy song in the album) and “Someone You Loved” (which was written in such a way that it can be applied to multiple situations). The album has a runtime of 42 minutes.
The title comes from the first verse of the song “Figure it Out,” which ironically is not on the album because it couldn’t be produced within the deadline.
All the singles from the Bloom EP are included in the album. “Someone You Loved” is taken from the Breach EP and charted at #1 in the UK for seven consecutive weeks. Follow-up single “Hold Me While You Wait” was released two weeks prior to the album.
To promote the album, Lewis got a billboard in the London Underground subway station.
Within the first week of release, an equivalent of 89,506 records were sold, making Divinely Uninspired the fastest selling LP of 2019 (as of May 2019) and getting it certified as Gold. It peaked at #1 in the UK Albums Chart.
Independent gave the album a rating of 4 out of 5, praising its songwriting. Atwood Magazine also gave it rave reviews.
On the other hand, NME’s Jordan Bassett gave the album a 2 out of 5 saying that it lacked personality and Clash Magazine gave it 4 out of 10, saying that all the tracks dealt with the same subject matter.
“Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent” Q&A
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What has Lewis said about the album?
Lewis told in an open letter to fans and media,
Everyone always tells you about how amazing recording their first album was and how they’ll always look back on the “process” with fond memories. I will look back on it as an extremely stressful time that somehow also managed to be extremely boring. The actual process of building the songs up I loved, but recording the same guitar parts over and over again to get them right and going back on mixes for weeks, I did not.
I hope people don’t think it’s shit. I mean don’t get me wrong there will be one or two stinkers on there, but I’m only human and we all make mistakes, but as a whole I think it’s pretty fucking good. I’m excited for it to be released and have people finally be able to hear a full body of work from me for the first time. Should it bomb completely or receive an absolute critical lambasting, don’t worry, it’s just my life’s work up until this point…
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What's with the title?
Lewis said,
I never thought I’d get to the point where I’d be able to release a proper album and I ABSOLUTELY never thought that when I did, I would give it a name as stupid I have, but here we are.
The title comes from the first verse of the song “Figure it Out,” which ironically is not on the album because it couldn’t be produced within the deadline.
Lewis explained the line in a now deleted Instagram post,
Broken by desire to be heavenly said devoutly uninspired to a hellish extent – It’s kinda about being in music and how it’s very up and down thing. I want to be like a great song writer and I want to be up there. At most days you feel like you try writing but that’s just fucking shit. The desire to be good at something can be a pain in the fucking arse. A lot of time I try to write but I’m like I’m never going to write another song, that’s just shit.
Lewis added in an interview with Atwood Magazine,
At points during making this album, I did feel divinely uninspired to a hellish extent just because I wanted it to be really good. Like I wanted to do well with it. I didn’t want to fuck it up and yeah, I hope I haven’t. Also, when I got to the end, I found it quite funny to look back on that process.
Another reason behind the title is that Lewis thought “it would be quite funny to watch the label try and market an album with such a negative title.”
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How did Lewis decide on the track order?
Lewis discusses each track’s position on the tracklist in this video:
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Translations:
