European pop sensation Lewis Capaldi cheerfully rebranded himself as “Chewis Capaldi” on social media Thursday after British rocker Noel Gallagher called him “Chewbacca” in a Variety interview that upped the taunting between the two stars.
Capaldi even posted an image that had his face grafted onto the “Star Wars” wookie’s, as his fans declared war on the ex-Oasis musician.
In a freewheeling Variety Q&A published Wednesday, Gallagher renewed his public feud with Capaldi — to hilarious effect, if you’re a fan of the art of insult comedy, but not so amusingly to many Capaldi fans or patriots of Scotland.
“F—ing Chewbacca should enjoy his 15 minutes,” Gallagher told Variety. “The greatest day of his life that I slagged him off or called him an idiot. It’s the greatest day of his f—ing life so far. He’s just thinking, ‘Wow!’ Well, I know you’re Scottish and all that, but f—ing hell! It is like a third world country, but for f—‘s sake, man, you must have had a better day than this. Surely!”
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The badinage began when Gallagher did a radio interview using Capaldi as an example of how “wank” pop music has become. Capaldi responded, “That’s me, I’ve peaked, slagged off by Noel Gallagher. It’s me. What a day. What a f—in’ day.” He further wore a T-shirt with Gallagher’s face on it for his Glastonbury Festival appearance.
Although most of the taunting has taken place from Gallagher’s side, and Capaldi has come off as good-natured about it, he did take some shots at his nemesis’ age when he took to social media with a video in which he said: “Noel Gallagher has just slagged me off. This is dreams coming true. It’s Father’s Day, I’m being slagged off by a man who is old enough to be my Da’ and I’ve never been more happy. Happy Father’s Day Noel.”
Gallagher’s daughter, Anaïs, posted a tweet in which she said, presumably sarcastically, that she wanted to be Capaldi when she grows up. Capaldi responded to that by publicly asking Gallagher’s daughter to marry him.
Told of Anaïs’ tweeted wish to become Capaldi, Gallagher told Variety, “When she grows up? Well, she better be better looking than that c—! Let’s hope she doesn’t have his looks. Or his girth. I’m not going to allow that. She’s gonna have a bad day soon if she wants to be Lewis Capaldi when she grows up.”
As might be expected, the “third world” troll is making it into the headlines in some of the Scottish media’s coverage.
In the Q&A, Gallagher also had some choice words for Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun, calling them both “American idiots” and telling U.S. music fans, “I’d be ashamed of them, if I were you.” Asked whether he would see his brother Liam’s new documentary — for which he denied the use of Oasis songs that he wrote — Gallagher said that “every time I see that c—’s face, I want to f—ing take out a McDonald’s with a machine gun. So I don’t think I’ll be going to the local cinema to watch him rewrite f—ing history (about) what a great guy he is.” He added, “You should go and see it, though. Apparently there’s a lot of jogging in it. I don’t know about you, but I like to see my favorite rock stars jogging. Don’t you?”
And, in a mic-drop example of the humble-brag, after it came up that both Capaldi and Liam mentioned him at Glastonbury, Gallagher said, “People are obsessed with me. They should stop obsessing about me, because really, I’m not even that good.”
On a more serious level, perhaps, the singer-guitarist said, “I meet young people, and they’re so culturally lost at the moment. All they can do, young people, is take pictures of each other. Because there’s nothing else. You know, when a band walks out on stage, they might as well be at a photo shoot. Nobody lives in the moment. Everybody’s sharing everything with everybody.”