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Ellie Goulding was one of the UK’s best-selling artists, but behind the scenes things were not right
Ellie Goulding’s new album begins with the sound of a maddened crowd, recorded on a festival date on the star’s 2016/17 Delirium tour.
It could have been Glastonbury, it could have been Rock In Rio, but the location is not important.
Wherever she was, Goulding was exhausted, tired, and unhappy.
“I had just become a robot that could walk on stage and act wild and energetic,” she says.
“But I was actually exhausted, and I don’t remember any of that. I really couldn’t properly enjoy anything.”
His memories are so blurred that he recently wrote to his tour manager to see if he had saved copies of his schedule, “so that he can at least have a trigger to remember all the places I’ve been to.”
“There was a true temporality in my life,” she says. “It was about survival. I really didn’t understand who she was at the time.”
By some measures, Goulding should have been on top of the world. After topping the BBC’s Sound of … list in 2010, her career had become stratospheric. Her debut album, Lights, reached number one in the UK and the title track went five times platinum in the United States, launching her career there.
He played at the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge wedding reception, beat the festival’s bills, earned a Grammy nomination for Love Me Like You Do, and made the soundtrack for the John Lewis Christmas ad.
But when it came time to record her third album, Delirium, she felt her direction was pushing her in the wrong direction.
She participated in writing sessions with A-list writers like Greg Kurstin (Adele, Paul McCartney), Ryan Tedder (Lady Gaga, Beyonce), and Max Martin (all the other major pop artists of the past 30 years).
At the time, he said he saw the album “as an experiment” in making a “great pop album,” and told the NME, “I made a conscious decision that I wanted it to be on another level.”
But deep down, she was still the same musician in the room who accidentally started a career by befriending dance producers on MySpace. The bright pop sound and costumes that hugged the figure were never completely comfortable.
“It was like, ‘Okay, so maybe I’m destined to suddenly become this hulking pop star who has dancers and sparkle and God knows what else on tour,’ and I really enjoyed playing that role for a while, but I didn’t. I did it ‘I don’t like wearing those outfits every night and I knew deep down that it wasn’t me. “
‘I had to walk away’
Suffering from a form of impostor syndrome, Goulding dismissed the delusion, even when it went platinum in the UK.
“I think he also had other people write the album,” she says. “But looking back, it’s actually a really brilliant pop record. I think maybe it wasn’t an Ellie Goulding record.”
As a two-year tour progressed, the singer became increasingly disillusioned. He even considered leaving the music entirely.
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The star’s new album is more contemplative and thoughtful than the chart hits it has become known for.
“It got to a point where I really had to get away from it all,” he told ITV This Morning last year. “I thought for a second, ‘Maybe I can go quietly.'”
He took two years out of the limelight, launching campaigns for homelessness and climate change while putting music in the background.
Along the way, she also fell in love with art dealer Caspar Jopling, whom she married at York Minster Cathedral last year.
In contrast to their previous high-profile relationships with Niall Horan and Ed Sheeran, the couple are not bothered by tabloids, who live in Oxfordshire’s “disgustingly beautiful countryside”, while Jopling, who is also an international rower, studies a MBA at Oxford University. .
During the closure, Goulding has even been baking cakes for charity. She gives us a guided Zoom tour of her kitchen, where each work surface is covered in baking sheets and cooling racks, loaded with brownies, flapjacks, and muffins.
“These peanut butter cookies are just looking at me,” he laughs. “They are piercing my soul.”
Time away from music meant that Goulding “really had a chance to be and live.” She began to feel more established about herself and her music; and arranged what she jokingly calls “a friendly decoupling” with her former managers.
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Goulding married Caspar Jopling last year
Then, towards the end of 2018, he began working on what would become his fourth album, Brightest Blue.
Deeper and more emotional than anything I’ve recorded before, it digs up the ruins of the past five years – all the vulnerabilities and insecurities, sadness, drinking, and infatuation it took to get to a place of renewal.
It opens up, because it has to, with those sample noises and an explanation for Goulding’s extended musical absence.
“I feel like I’ve hardly been living“She sings at Start.”I’m thinking of a new beginning / It’s never too late to start again“
“I mistreated people”
The theme of the renewal continues throughout the album, especially in the exciting Love I’m Given, where Goulding apologizes for “the things I’ve done” and “the things I’ve hurt.”
The lyrics came out of nowhere, and he really didn’t appreciate what he was singing until the song ended.
“I heard it and said, ‘Sorry, what did I do again? What did I do wrong?’
“But I think I am referring to maybe I have not behaved in a way that I am proud or mistreated people,” says the singer.
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The singer has made all the packaging for her album from recycled materials.
The singer, who received therapy to deal with anger issues, says those bad attitudes stemmed from her own feelings of inadequacy and stress.
“I think he was the person I tried to create to deal with what he was doing, who was, you know, trying to be a million things at once and trying to cope with work, and then the parallelism of his career celebrities by your side
“And now that I’ve managed to unravel those things and almost, like cut them, I can finally give the right kind of love.
“And so the song is about the idea that you get the love you give.”
- Ellie Goulding: “I used alcohol to be more interesting”
- 2010 BBC Sound: Ellie Goulding
Goulding’s newly discovered confidence can be heard in the experimental arrangements of songs like Wine Drunk and Bleach, and the intricately layered vocals and transcendental strings of the title track, Brightest Blue.
The song’s upbeat lyrics were inspired by a trip to a New York gallery last year, where Goulding found himself in a room bathed in soft blue light.
“I went into this light show and it took over completely. You can feel this heat in it, it’s really weird,” she says.
“The next day I went to the studio with my engineer and I said, ‘Okay, I really want to write about this brightest blue I had,’ and the song just came out.
“And the first time I heard it [finished] with the ropes and everything, I just literally cried and I don’t do that. I’m not excited about my own music like that, but that song feels like a new beginning. “
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The star says she gave in to her love for Bon Iver and Francis & The Lights while making the new album.
Goulding is so confident in the new music that he has divided the album into two “sides”: the first 13 tracks are intimate songs, largely self-written, that expose their fragility.
The flip side, called “Eg.0” shows a safer, more rebellious alter-ego, featuring a series of annoying collaborations with Lauv, Swae Lee, and the late Juice WRLD.
But she insists that the latest songs, all previously released, have not been added to increase sales.
“I can’t just repudiate them and pretend they don’t exist,” he says, “and it’s important for me to show my craft as a pop writer.”
“You know, I can write great bloody pop songs and sing them pretty well too.”
“That is not necessarily who I am as an artist, so I would say Brightest Blue is much more a reflection of my indulgences with classical music and the burden of voices layered on top of each other.”
Early reviews suggest that the album will re-establish Goulding as one of the leading stars of British pop. The independent rated him as “the best of his career,” while The Line Of Best Fit said the first songs, in particular, show the 33-year-old “in her most sincere and sincere way.”
“I am glad that they recognize me as a musician and as a composer because that is what I have always been,” says the singer.
“So it’s really nice at this point to feel like I’ve come out of what was really chaotic [period] from being known as a celebrity until now, just being known as a musician.
“It just feels different. There seems to be no obsession with … about things that don’t really matter anymore.”
The brightest blue is now available from Polydor.
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