18 Music Week 05.10.12 INTERVIEW ELLIEGOULDING Ellie Goulding is back with her second album Halcyon after conquering the UK and cracking America
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BRIGHT LIGHTS S
TALENT BY TINA HART
he’s achieved massive success across the Pond and every one of her UK live dates thus far have sold out. Yet when Ellie
Goulding speaks to Music Week from tour rehearsals in Lancashire, she says “freaking out” about making her new set as perfect as possible. We reckon she’ll be fine. Aside from some downtime to record her new
album Halcyon in the UK, Goulding has been busy wooing North America, where her single Lights has surpassed multiple milestones: triple- platinum status, airplay No.1 at Top 40 radio in the US and Canada, and a No.2 peak on the Billboard Hot 100 after breaking the record for the longest ascent to the top end of chart. At the time of writing the track is spending its 40th week in the chart, standing proud at No.10.
Lest we forget, Goulding’s debut album, also
called Lights, went on to become the biggest and fastest-selling debut LP of 2010 in the UK. She has clocked up a whopping sales tally of
1.6 million albums and six million tracks worldwide to date, following her Brits Critics’ Choice and BBC Sound of… accolades. Not bad going for the Hereford lass. We spoke to her about her “cheeky little side
project”, trying to find the sound for her new album (“staying at home, playing guitar and being a bit emo”) and her secret to “slogging it out in America” (clue: it involves plenty of tea and vodka).
Congratulations on your American success... It’s been really bizarre. I remember starting out in the UK and everything was going really nicely. It seemed like I was doing tours that were selling out, and that was the most important thing to me. Then I started seeing things slowly creeping into
my diary that involved America and I thought “something fishy is going on here”. It’s been a long-ass journey [in the US] and it
started off back in the day doing really small shows before any releases. They sold out through word of mouth and internet stuff. There was an amazing reaction. We came back and did a six- week tour of small venues, then for a three-week tour in bigger venues and eventually did the Katy Perry tour including Madison Square Garden. It really has been a gradual thing. I’ve also done radio tours where I just go and
say hello to all the DJs. Radio is much more personal out there, they won’t just play your stuff. They’ll obviously play stuff that’s very poppy, but I don’t believe that Lights is even one of those typical pop songs so I’ve been really surprised. The reaction started building and before I knew it half of all America was playing it, and then the whole of America was playing it.
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