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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Mercy (Lewis Capaldi song)

2017 song by Lewis Capaldi

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ140263458 ↗
Source-derived summary

"Mercy" is a song by Scottish singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi. It was released as a track on 20 October 2017 via Virgin Records from his debut extended play Bloom, which was released on that day. Although it failed to chart, the song is certified Silver in the United Kingdom.

Background

Speaking to Genius about the song, Capaldi says the song "is about the moment someone is being told by their boyfriend or girlfriend that they don't want to be with them anymore... I think the worst way a relationship can end is when one person just one day realizes they don’t feel like they want to be with the other anymore... to be the person who’s still in love is a horrible position to be in. There’s nothing worse than seeing the other person not be as torn up about things coming to an end as you are."

Live performances

Capaldi has performed the song during a BBC Music Introducing session at Maida Vale Studios in 2017.

Editorial summary

“Mercy (Lewis Capaldi song)” enters the record as 2017 song by Lewis Capaldi. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mercy, Lewis and Capaldi can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2017—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Mercy, Lewis and Capaldi.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Mercy (Lewis Capaldi song)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mercy, Lewis and Capaldi provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q140263458. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mercy (Lewis Capaldi song)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mercy (Lewis Capaldi song) primary sources, Mercy (Lewis Capaldi song) archive and Mercy research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mercy (Lewis Capaldi song)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Mercy (Lewis Capaldi song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.