After 4 years since an official album release, Lewis Capaldi has unleashed Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent. This beautifully crafted album is a rollercoaster of emotions, creating a playlist for love stories as well as heartbreak.
Forget Me kicks off the album with a catchy melody that nearly distracts you from the crushing lyrics of love lost and regret.
This song is perfect for the slightly bitter hopeless romantic.
With lyrics that tell the tale of wanting your past love to think of you, even if they only think of the negative things, the song is laced with regret, passion, and slight hints of self-absorption.
The oxymoronic mixture of heartbreaking lyrics and an upbeat track makes this song, ironically, unforgettable. Forget Me starts off the album with a 9/10.
The second song on the album is Wish You The Best. If Forget Me was a cheeky way of expression sadness after a break up, Wish You The Best is the exact opposite.
It's slow. It's sad. Everything behind the production is absolutely perfect. The message couldn't have been more perfectly executed. There will always be times when we forgo speaking our true feelings for the peace of someone else.
Letting a previously happy relationship go is a heartbreak that everyone experiences, so the song is relational on that front alone. Plus, Capaldi's vocals are just absolutely breathtaking.
This song deserves nothing less than a 10/10.
Pointless is the third song on the album, and it works almost as a prequel to the first tracks we've heard so far.
Without love, everything loses its meaning. It's simple, classy, and a cliché that sustains its truthfulness through the ages. Additionally, the music video focusing on motherly love instead of romantic love is beautiful.
There's really not a lot to say about this song other than that it's gold. Pointless earns another 10/10 rating.
The fourth track on the album is Heavenly Kind of State of Mind, and I adore this song.
We revisit the higher tempo that was originally introduced in Forget Me, and it is much needed after 2 ballads.
The bass line in this song is extremely catchy and enjoyable. Having a bass so prevalent in the track isn't something that is seen super often in today's music, but it is so refreshing and fun.
It's almost cruel / The blue in your eyes / The kind of blasphemy that makes a congregation cry / When I'm with you / It's like nothing else / Like I could run and tell the devil to go f*ck himself
The religious connotation behind the title is really played upon throughout the song, and the wit behind it almost makes you want to laugh. It's a fun song that is unlike anything else on the album up til this point.
A 9/10 for this song may seem high, but I can't get enough of it. It's super lighthearted and perfectly placed on the album.
Haven't You Ever Been In Love Before, the fifth track, left me a little breathless after the first listen.
A story of regression and isolation when previous heartbreaks come back to haunt you, this song is fantastic. The orchestra in the track mixed with a relatively quick tempo makes this ballad anything but boring.
Although fear in relationships isn't necessarily a new topic to Lewis Capaldi, this is a fresh take on a heartbreak story. It's really special to hear a male musician accurately articulate this idea from a woman's perspective.
It would be incredibly easy for Lewis Capaldi to fall into a redundant cycle of ballads that all sound somewhat similar. Instead, he creates art that gives individual characteristics to each song.
Haven't You Been In Love Before is a 10/10, and I'd give it a higher rating if I could.
The sixth track Love The Hell Out of You revisits the religious imagery that is woven through the album.
The lyrics speak about loving the "hell" (depression, anxiety, etc.) out of someone because they were there for you at your darkest also.
A track that focuses on love but lacks romance, Love The Hell Out of You changes the direction that the project as a whole has been walking in.
Most of Lewis Capaldi's songs tend to be more related to romantic relationship due to that being the most common source of heartache. It's refreshing that a track could be more widely generalized to fit any type of relationship whether it be romantic or platonic.
Love The Hell Out of You earns a solid 9/10.
Burning is the seventh track on the album, and it's honestly the first track that hasn't completely blown me away.
With that being said, I did like the song, and it went in a direction that I wasn't entirely expecting.
The tempo dissonance between the track and the melody in the opening verse is confusing to the ear, and that remained something that I couldn't really get past when thinking of the song as a whole.
However, the second verse and choruses were really entertaining and lyrically engaging. I don't actively dislike the track, but not every song can be a favorite. Burning sits with an 8/10 rating.
Any Kind of Life is the eighth track on the album. This song is truly just grief put to music.
While previous songs that Capaldi has release regarding grief have danced more with the questions that someone asks themselves regarding a loss, this song is a cry of uncertainty after loss.
Whether you're grieving death, a relationship, a diagnosis, etc., it can be impossible to feel as though you'll ever fully move on.
Any Kind of Life represents this feeling of unpredictability genuinely, and the song acts as a type of sister song to Capaldi's earlier hit Before You Go.
Now you're not here I can't explain / The carousel of my constant pain / I'm not sure that I can hold on anymore / Became a victim of circumstance / Should have said when I had the chance / I don't want any kind of life without you
Any Kind of Life is an 8/10.
Are you the oldest sibling, mom friend, or generally just the one that everyone in your life comes to to make things okay? If that sounds like you, The Pretender will punch you with lyrics so relatable that you will in fact feel sick to your stomach.
It's so much easier to change yourself for others instead of giving them the chance to reject who you really are. This song encapsulates that in a very simple, but gently forward, way.
The vocals on The Pretender are packed full of emotion, and there's no way to step away from this song unaffected. It's nothing less than a 9/10.
The tenth song on the album is Leave Me Slowly, and it's very intriguing to the ear.
Throughout the song, there are a lot of changes to both the backing track and the melody that is being sung.
This is seen through the drums and guitar growing in relevance more and more as the song progresses. Capaldi also changes various notes at the end of the chorus at different occurrences.
It's great that these characteristics were included into the track because it would undoubtedly be missing impact without them. The lyrics are relatively simple, and the melody isn't very complex. However, it's a good song to begin winding down the album.
Leave Me Slowly isn't the most glamorous song on the album, but it's a good story with an overall good sound. It's an 8/10 rating for this ballad.
How This Ends, the eleventh track on the album, holds all of the characteristic emotions of Capaldi's music, but it has a much brighter tone.
The lyrics are still heart breaking, and this song is anything but optimistic, but it's a very light sound.
Vocally, Capaldi sings in, what sounds to be, a much higher placement. While a lot of his music is sung in what singers call a "chest voice", this song is placed in his "head voice". This provides a sound that really rings as opposed to a sound of sheer power that hits your eardrums.
The track itself is also very light with a heavy emphasis on stringed instruments. It's a nice balance to have emotionally weighted words put to a track that embodies the opposite.
How This Ends is very simple in its complexities. While I hate giving half points, the song earned an 8.5/10.
The final track on the album is How I'm Feeling Now. The placement of this song is simultaneously confusing and brilliant.
How I'm Feeling Now is a gut wrenching song about gaining a lot of the things you dreamed of but being unable to accept your success because of self doubt and/or mental illness.
So why was it chosen to be the finale of the first collection of music we've had from Capaldi in four years?
In the strangest way, the song is hopeful. Yes, life can really suck sometimes. Yes, our thoughts do more to destroy us than encourage us. Yes, it is so tempting to give up. The very acknowledgment of these things is what makes the song peaceful.
Life never goes as planned, but a curve ball isn't unique to anyone. It's in the chaos that we find connection, by sharing all of the messiness with the people we love. It's the reason people love this song. It's why people love this album.
It's why people love Lewis Capaldi.
The final track earns the album another 9/10.
Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent was a long awaited release by all of Lewis Capaldi's fans, and it was well worth the wait.
Unsurprisingly, the entire album rounds up to an averaged 9/10 ranking.
This complete project is a fantastic work from Capaldi, and it's sure to be something that people continue to analyze and love for a long time to come.
The timeline of release may have made a lot of people around the world impatient, but it truly paid off to have such a well rounded album.
Whether you're interested in the ballads, the stories, or Lewis Capaldi himself, this album needs to be queued in your listening platforms immediately.
Let us know below what your favorite track from the album is!
Great review!