I don’t eat that much meat I try to use sustainable fashion brands we’re trying to make my tour completely plastic free, and cut down on flights, with a better eco-bus situation. And having a bigger consciousness of your day-to-day actions. The next step is electing people who take this seriously, and to trust scientists. I can’t help but feel a bit frustrated that I’m the only one speaking out about something so important – no one else in my peer group is. I know that “celebrities shouldn’t get involved in politics”, but it’s something we have to act on now. Climate change has got to a critical point where we all need to be very active we need to compensate for what’s going on in certain political situations. One of my motivations to have a bigger platform as a singer is so that I have more people to reach. The wildfires were exacerbated by climate change, the crazy storms that have been happening: it’s very obvious. It’s gone beyond facts and boring data – we’re seeing it with our own eyes. Going to Greenland and seeing glaciers collapse. But often I really need to just write a bloody good pop song after meeting climate scientists, or going to the climate assembly in Kenya last year. That’s how I stay not sounding like anything else – I have that locked, for ever.ĭoes pop ever feel frivolous compared with your climate change activism? My voice doesn’t sound like anyone’s in the world, so I’ve got that to my advantage, and I can also manipulate my voice as part of the track or make it into a sample. But I still find it thrilling when people release something that doesn’t sound like anything else – I’m always fighting to work with producers coming up with whole new soundscapes. I think it’s important to know the way pop is changing – I would never release something completely blind, without listening to any radio or Spotify, and expect people to like it and for it to compare with what’s out there. There’s a bit of a pop-rap feel to some of the new tracks – were you trying to do something new ? So there probably are small pieces of the songs that relate to things that frustrate me, and things that are happening in the world, but I’ve always been conscious that I want to keep songwriting as an escape. There was a period where I felt someone was trying to sabotage me. But I still didn’t feel the need to be angry – so maybe that’s a good thing.Īre you talking about Ed Sheeran? Įr … not specifically. I found it really baffling, and just sad, that something that I’d built entirely by myself, my career, was somehow at risk. Somebody tried to write a song to damage me, and it was a really horrifying thing to go through. But I can’t help writing with empathy, trying to understand why a person has behaved the way they have. Electricity is about a friend who had been cheated on quite cruelly for a couple of years. Artifice rooted in synth pop, dancehall, R & B, and other ear-catching genres lacks the soul of sisters rooted in gospel or the confessional intimacy of folk-inspired singer-songwriters, but the frequent thrill of the savvy mix that Ellie Goulding surfs cannot be denied.Flux is about thinking about the person who you almost ended up with – I’m a sucker for what could have been. The rest, in comparison, inevitably pales a little. The best track on the album is undoubtedly “Slow Grenade”: one of those goose pimple-inducing hits, shimmering with the excitement its title announces, with Lauv‘s silken-soft voice the perfect match for her own. The album is “double-sided”, a bit of a gimmick, except here Side B features collaborations with blackbear, Lauv, Diplo, Swae Lee and Juice WRLD, while Side A's mostly her own vocals. Echo and reverb are wheeled in to add texture and drama, and Goulding and supporting voices subject to now almost clichéd Vocorder distortion. The hooks and earworms roll through with a precision that’s designed for maximum appeal. The production mostly by Joe Kearns, is impressive: a cunning mix of electronic artifice and light instrumental touches. There’s no bedsit introspection here, though, but rather, a girlish innocence combined with the joy of breaking loose: she's above all a very gifted and dedicated performer: her self-penned songs pieces of power-packed entertainment. Her slightly breathless voice suggests the promise of excitement and romance. But her emerging self-possession and confidence hasn’t eliminated the vulnerability essential to her appeal. The girl-wonder has matured a little: in a recent interview she spoke of having freed herself from the ubiquitous sexual pressures of a male-dominated industry. Inspired no doubt by a string of power-women from Madonna to Beyoncé, Shakira to Joss Stone, Goulding mixes and matches a variety of styles in a manner that exploits familiarity with just enough freshness to make it sound new.