Someone You Loved — Lewis Capaldi (2018)

Why it's in this book

"Someone You Loved" is May's anchor song. It uses the same loop as "Let It Be", November's song: C, G, A minor and F, the most sung loop in pop, which in this book it also shares with "Resistiré". What is new here is the voice. The chorus goes higher than your voices can comfortably reach, and in Year 9 (3º ESO) they are changing, so a soloist sings it and the choir comes in underneath, in thirds. It is the song in this book for learning to accompany someone without drowning them out. The record is in D flat major, a key with five flats. In class we take it down a semitone, to C, and the loop becomes four easy ukulele chords. In the room with nothing, we work on the voice: the soloist, the choir underneath and the dynamics, from very soft to loud; in the ukulele room, the loop; in the music room, the keyboard plays alone for most of the song and the drums come in only in the last chorus. One warning: the bridge changes chords and adds a D minor. It is the only new chord, and it can be learned in one session. In May the other song is "Me gustas tú", with spoken voice: two opposite ways of using the voice.

Why this song

It was the UK's best-selling song of 2019. If you have heard it, you probably remember it for one moment: the chorus, when Capaldi's voice climbs and sounds as if it is about to crack.

The question on this page is: what does the music do to make a voice sound on the edge of breaking? And, in class: what does a choir do when the melody goes too high for it?

Historical context

Lewis Capaldi is a Scottish singer-songwriter. "Someone You Loved" came out in November 2018 on an EP, a short record with only a few songs.

At first not much happened. Then it grew slowly, week after week, and in 2019 it reached number 1 in the UK, where it stayed for seven weeks. In the United States it took even longer: it reached number 1 in its 24th week on the chart. When a song succeeds like that, late and little by little, it is called a sleeper hit.

Capaldi said it took him six months to write, sitting at the piano. In another interview he said he wrote it thinking about his grandmother, who had died. Many people hear it as a break-up song. Both readings fit.

Foto: Drew de F Fawkes, CC BY 2.0, vía Wikimedia Commons

This is how Capaldi played in 2018, the year the song came out: in a small venue in Brighton, at The Great Escape, a festival for new bands. Alone, with a guitar. A year later he was playing the big festivals, as in the cover photo.

Musical characteristics

The usual loop. From the intro to the last chorus, the piano repeats four chords: on the record, D flat, A flat, B flat minor and G flat. Taken down to C, they are C, G, A minor and F, the same chord progression as "Let It Be". The whole song, except the bridge, fits in that loop.

A fast song that sounds slow. Count the beat: 110 per minute, faster than "Let It Be". And yet it sounds like a ballad. What makes it sound slow is that the chords change slowly and the voice stretches the notes. Tempo is not the only thing that decides whether something sounds slow.

The voice that climbs. In the verse, Capaldi sings low, almost speaking. In the chorus, the melody leaps up and the voice sounds strained, raspy, at its limit. That is on purpose. The distance between the lowest and the highest note of a melody is called its range. The bigger the range, the harder the voice has to work, and the more emotion that effort carries.

Why a soloist sings it in class. In Year 9 many voices are changing. The notes that are comfortable for everyone to sing together go from G to E: that is your shared comfortable range (tessitura). The chorus goes above it. The answer is not to lower the song until it stops sounding like itself: it is for a soloist to sing the melody and for the choir to sing underneath, a third lower.

How it grows. The piano leads almost all the time. The song goes from very soft to very loud without changing chords. That change in volume across a song is called dynamics.

Hard facts: D flat major on the record and C major in class, 4/4, 110 beats per minute, 3:02. Form: intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus.

Guided listening

Play the music video. In the intro, count the four piano chords. When the first one comes back, start again: it is a loop.

In the first verse, listen to how low Capaldi sings. Try singing quietly with him: the verse fits almost every voice.

When the chorus arrives, notice the leap upwards. Listen to how the voice turns rougher. Ask yourself whether you could sing that note comfortably.

In the bridge, the chords change. Listen to how the first one is minor and sounds darker than the usual loop.

In the last chorus, compare the volume with the intro. The same chords; what has changed is the dynamics.

Trivia and curiosities

• The star of the music video is Peter Capaldi, the "Doctor Who" actor, a distant relative of the singer. He plays a widower who visits the family of the woman who received his wife's heart. The video was made with an organ donation charity.

• There is a second music video, from August 2019, starring Lewis Capaldi himself. One song, two stories.

• The song has six writers. Capaldi wrote it with Samuel Romans and the three producers. In today's pop, a four-chord song is almost never written by one person.

• In August 2025 it became the fourth song in Spotify's history to reach 4 billion streams.

Classroom activities

• Everyone on the verse, the soloist on the chorus. The whole class sings the verse in unison, in C. Boys an octave lower. In the chorus, the class stops and a soloist sings.

• The choir underneath. Now, in the chorus, the choir sings the same line as the soloist, a third lower. Softer than the soloist: the choir supports, it does not compete.

• The loop on ukulele. C, G, A minor, F. One chord per bar, gentle strumming. For the bridge, add D minor: D minor, A minor, G, A minor.

• Dynamics. Play the loop four times in a row. The first time, barely audible; the last, as loud as you can without it sounding bad. Record it and listen to whether the change comes through.

• Band. In the music room, the keyboard plays alone until the last chorus. That is where the drums come in. Notice what changes in the room when they do.

Key vocabulary

• Chord progression — progresión de acordes
• Range — ámbito: de la nota más grave a la más aguda
• Tessitura — tesitura: las notas que una voz canta cómoda
• Dynamics — dinámica: los cambios de volumen

Resources

Official music video — The one with Peter Capaldi, made with an organ donation charity.

Ukulele tutorial — ukeplayalongs. Play and sing along.

Guitar tutorial — JustinGuitar. An easy version, explained step by step.

Piano tutorial — PHianonize. An easy version.