Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi announced Monday that he will “cancel all commitments” until he plays England’s Glastonbury music festival on June 24.
The 26-year-old said that while the tour has been “beyond anything I could have ever dreamed of,” he has been “full on both mentally and physically.”
“I need to take a moment to rest and recover, to be at my best and ready for Glastonbury and all of the other incredible shows coming up so that I’m able to continue doing what I love for a long time to come,” Capaldi said. “I need to take these three weeks to be Lewis from Glasgow for a bit, spend some time with my family and friends and do normal life things that are an important part of me feeling better.”
The “Before You Go” singer was scheduled to perform various shows in Glasgow, Dublin, London and Norway before taking the stage at Glastonbury, which is scheduled for June 20-25.
“I haven’t been home properly since Christmas and at the moment I’m struggling to get to grips with it all,” he said.
He apologized and expressed his gratitude for fans’ support in a message posted to Instagram and Twitter. .
“I know many of you will have spent money on travel or hotels, which I appreciate more than ever with how difficult things are economically at the moment, so I’m extremely sorry for the impact this will have. The fact you’re willing to come out and spend your time, money and love on these shows is beyond comprehension and I feel incredibly lucky,” he said.
Whether fans will receive a refund for their tickets is unclear.
“I’m getting all the help and support I need from the incredible people around me who I’m so grateful for,” he wrote. “I take none of this for granted and can’t wait to be back doing it again.”
Capaldi has been open about how taxing his life of stardom has been. He said the pressure of songwriting and impostor syndrome contribute to the twitch associated with his newly diagnosed Tourette syndrome.
In “How I’m Feeling Now,” the Netflix documentary about Capaldi, he said his twiches are at times accompanied by panic attacks in which he “can’t breathe, I can’t feel breath going in. I get dizzy, I feel like something’s happening in my head and I’m sweating. … My whole body starts to do what my shoulder does and I’m convulsing. Either I feel like I’m going to be stuck like that forever or I’m going to die.”
He told The Times of London in April that there’s a “trade-off” of making and playing music and that the physical and mental effort was “worth it.”
“But if it gets to a point where I’m doing irreparable damage to myself, I’ll quit,” he said. “I hate hyperbole but it is a very real possibility that I will have to pack music in.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
