Ellie Goulding – Lights
Ellie Goulding has come a long way in a pretty short time. From humble beginnings playing clarinet in Hereford, she’s rapidly ascended the slopes of pop. In 2010 she picked up both the BBC Sound Of… award and the BRIT Awards Critic’s Choice gong, all before the release of her debut album ‘Lights’.
She’s since gone on to big success on both sides of the Atlantic, touring with Katy Perry and collaborating with everybody from Tinie Tempah to stadium dubstep slinger Skrillex. She was even asked to perform at the Royal wedding between William and Kate, a clear sign that she’d amassed some pretty serious A-list credentials.
When it comes to musical influences Goulding doesn’t like to over think things. “Everything we do is based on our subconscious and experience that we’ve had in our pasts that’s been nailed into our head without us knowing,” she told Q Magazine. “A lot of my childhood’s blurry cos I blocked it out. But I believe that where I grew up encouraged me to be more experimental and different. I didn’t have much music… if you liked Björk you were a bloody weirdo but you were allowed to like pop. So I had the best of both worlds growing up in the countryside and loving whatever pop you could buy from Hereford HMV, but also suddenly finding music for myself and recognising my musical maturity. I’ve grown to find things that are more weird and wonderful. But then I also just love turning on the radio and hearing a banging good pop song.”
This balance between the left field and the mainstream is very much in evidence on ‘Lights’. It’s got the kind of big chorus that sets up camp on your brain and refuses to be dislodged, but it’s wrapped up in a slightly offbeat package that marks Goulding out as something a little different from her contemporaries.
The next step for Goulding is to follow up her debut album, already re-released in an expanded form as ‘Bright Lights’. The good news is we shouldn’t have that too long to wait, with an October 2012 release date being tentatively mooted for the ‘more emotional’ new record.
