Lewis Capaldi Pays Homage To ‘Club Tropicana’ In ‘Forget Me’ Video
The Ibiza-set visual subverts expectations for sad songs
Lewis Capaldi has followed up his big comeback single “Forget Me” with a vibrant video for the mammoth new song.
In the first 24 hours since it was released, the track – which is the Scottish pop star’s first since 2019 – racked up more than 2 million streams.
Now, Capaldi has shared the accompanying visuals for the song, which pay homage to WHAM!’s classic single, “Club Tropicana.” Working with director Louis Bhose, who also helmed the video for his single “Grace,” Capaldi set out to duplicate the 1983 clip, shot for shot.
After two women walk up to Pikes Hotel in Ibiza – the same place the “Club Tropicana” video was filmed – the camera cuts to the singer-songwriter by the pool. It continues to recreate the visuals with shots of him being flipping off of a lido into the pool, sitting by the beach, and pushing his hair underneath a stream of water.
“You hear a sad song and you expect a sad video. There’s catharsis in that. But to go in the other direction completely felt more in line with the Lewis that walked onstage at Glastonbury in full Noel Gallagher getup,” Bhose said in a press release. “The performance is classic Capaldi: ‘yeah, no bother, just singing this song with a cocktail in my hand. I’m fine, not thinking about my ex, here at Club Tropicana.’”
“‘Forget Me’ is a song that’s so dear to my heart, and I definitely feel like it’s my best tune yet,” Capaldi shared in a statement last week. “It’s about a break-up I went through where after a year, the only real contact I had with my ex was seeing her ‘post-me’ life play out on her Instagram.
“I was at a point where I was feeling pretty miserable, and she seemed like she was moving on and having the best time, thriving, and I hated it. It seemed unfair to me that she appeared happy while I was hurting, and I was fearful she might have forgotten about me completely, so I wrote a song about it.”
The new single was first announced during the closing night of the Scottish pop star’s sold-out, two-night stand at London’s O2 Arena. “Forget Me” marks the start of a new era for the 25-year-old star after he took over the world with his debut album, Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent.
