“You know,” she says, smiling, “Noel Gallagher said to me at the Brits a couple of years ago: ‘I really fuckin’ love your music, but don’t fuckin’ tell anyone.’ So he’s lying. “Who gives a shit what Ellie Goulding is up to? Really? It blows my fucking mind.” “Does anybody give a fuck about what any of these current pop stars are up to?” he said in one interview. It would be snide to question the popular enthusiasm for celebrities’ interest in environmental issues or social injustice, but cultural commentator and sometime musician Noel Gallagher had few qualms about this last year.
I mean, I care a lot about things like the environment and homelessness, but I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not just to make certain people think I’m interesting.” We’re back in the dressing room, that vodka bottle now looking a little empty. “Can people stop thinking I’m boring, please?” she laughs after the show. “Not right now,” she adds, before launching into a song the tempo of which hovers defiantly around mid, “but I’ll bear that in mind.” On stage tonight, after one ballad, she declares: “We need to get warmed up!” The crowd goes berserk. Sometimes, it seems Goulding toys with that image, and with perceptions of her. But her persona never quite recovered from being defined as the new queen of beige.
#YOUTUBE ELLIE GOULDING MIX PLUS#
Nevertheless, the furthest reaches of her Halcyon and Delirium albums, plus collaborations with the likes of Major Lazer, have showcased a compelling and inventive pop artist who seems to exist in parallel with the Windsor-approved department-store balladeer many of tonight’s audience members are here to see. Goulding has questioned everything from her vocal ability to her appearance, but says she is ‘calm and happy’. Goulding is deeply aware of how she has been regarded in some circles since her credible, electro-inspired and inventive earliest releases were eclipsed by her version of Elton John’s Your Song, which featured in a John Lewis Christmas ad, became her first major hit and led to her performing the song at a royal wedding. I just feel I need to go away for a bit.” It does seem, I suggest, that she’s striking a very fragile balance between being all right and not all right, if a single video shoot could jeopardise an entire world tour.
“If I’d done the video, I don’t even know if I’d be well enough to be on this tour,” she says. Earlier this year, she was forced to pull out of shooting a video, and her excellent electro-pop single Something in the Way You Move was eventually promoted by a video consisting of cobbled-together live footage, rather than a specially commissioned clip. There also seems to be a mystery ailment (“I wasn’t well for a while – I don’t really want to say why, but I’m OK now”) as well as irregular sleep that she refuses to temper with sleeping tablets. Last year, she enjoyed the biggest No 1 of her career with Love Me Like You Do, the improbably superb theme song to Fifty Shades of Grey, but before Christmas she talked of suffering from exhaustion. But, if I’m really honest with myself, I do feel surprisingly OK.”īeyond dealing with the public collapse of a relationship, Goulding is also negotiating a path through the relentless physical demands placed on the modern popstar. I mean, I broke up with my boyfriend, that was shit. “I’m fine,” she shrugs when I suggest that the scenario is not exactly ideal.
‘There are occasional moments when I feel like what I’ve achieved is pretty phenomenal’: on stage at the Barclaycard Arena, Birmingham.
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