Videos

Ellie Goulding 'Under The Sheets'

• 26th Oct 2009

ELLIE GOULDING

UNDER THE SHEETS
SINGLE RELEASED 16th NOVEMBER ON NEON GOLD

You couldn't accuse Ellie Goulding of being obvious. She makes music that will appeal to lots of people, but it’s of the intriguing, curious kind. Described invariably as ‘electro-folk-acoustic-pop’ (or just ‘brilliant’ would suffice), her songs are soaked in an almost cinematic sensibility; the yearning lyrics and resolute refrain of debut single Under The Sheets, for instance, sound like a scene from Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet, with ace lyrics like “We're under the sheets/ And you're killing me/ In our house of paper/ Your words all over me”.

Hailing from Hereford originally, but now settled in London, Ellie is different for many reasons. She likes Beyoncé and Björk, but also Pearl Jam and Kiki Dee. She listens to folk music. She used to play the clarinet until “it began to really irritate me.” She has been keeping a diary since the age of seven. She used to share a bedroom with her two sisters in a tiny house and was only allowed to sing at an allotted time. The whole family told her to shut up. “My mum said my voice was weird.” Her voice isn't weird, but it is pretty extraordinary and incredibly captivating. It sounds like it's full of fancy effects, and yet it's not. It's her actual voice. It possesses a somewhat oxymoronic quality; delicately striking. Understated and intense. There's also a sense of controlled abandonment, which makes you want to sing along really loudly, because you think you might sound as great as her. You don't. But it's massively enjoyable to do anyway. “I think I used to listen to a bit too much Dolores O'Riordan and Lauryn Hill. I've smoothed it out a bit now though. I found my own identity.”

She's a bit (ok, a lot) of a hypochondriac. She's ridiculously healthy (we're talking 10k a day runs). She can produce – not as in inverted comma’s 'produce', but make an actual song in an actual studio with actual instruments. If you see her live – and you really, really should – you can expect to see her play guitar and drums. And yes, they are plugged into a wall and everything. She hasn't seen her dad in years, which, she admits, “is a bit fucked up, isn't it?” She loves reading books by Murakami. She has a sketch of a “kind of a face thing” given to her by reclusive dubstep producer, Burial, on her kitchen wall. She persuaded Frankmusik to work with her just by messaging him on MySpace with an acoustic version of her song Wish I Stayed. They spent a week in Croydon, eating kebabs. Well, Frank did. Ellie ate “fish and salad. I’m not exactly your average rock star, am I?”

Well, no, Ellie, you're not. Thank God.

She’s had write-up’s in the NME, RWD and The Guardian, despite the fact she only just signed a record deal, having built a whole bunch of buzz all by herself. Goulding’s transformative covers of Passion Pitt’s Sleepyhead and Bon Iver’s The Wolves became so popular they topped the Hypemachine chart not once, but twice. In fact, lots of Internet type people have been furiously tapping their Macs in praise of the 21 year-old with the evocative voice and mesmerizing melodies. Electrotrash even made Ellie ‘Wife Of The Week.’ Which sounds a bit stalky, but is also rather nice. She’s achieved all this with help from producer of the moment, Starsmith. Together they make multi-layered music that explodes with unexpected touches. There's synth, oh yes, but also lots of gorgeous percussion and stuttering vocals, and harps and big, huge drums that bash you about a bit. It makes you want to sway and dance and fall over. Sparse and shy it isn't. The utterly epic, otherworldly excellence of Starry Eyed could be the lovechild of Dune and The Dark Crystal. If film soundtracks could have kids, that is. Starsmith, the Katy Perry/ Paloma Faith remix maestro who co-produces with Goulding, is among the collective of credible sound-creators that are currently working with Ellie; Frankmusik, new-wave rapper Theophilus London and the brilliant Burial are all enamored, as are Passion Pit. The Massachusetts quintet were so in love with Goulding’s version of Sleepyhead, that they called her up and said 'Can we work with you, please?'

“You know how some people say ‘Listen to the music and then you’ll know what I’m about.’ And you listen to it, but you still don’t really know. I think you do genuinely have to listen to my lyrics and my music to understand what I’m doing,” says Ellie of her compelling, perceptive compositions. “I don’t think it’s what you’d expect.”

So all in all, it’s perhaps fair to assume that Ellie Goulding is quite clearly not another cookie-cutter chanteuse churned from the big old baking-machine of electro-folk-acoustic-pop. Not only encapsulating the do-it-yourself ethos of 2009, Ellie Goulding has created the sound of 2010.

The first single, Under The Sheets, will be released on indie label Neon Gold on November 16th on 7” and CD, before Ellie’s major label debut early next year.