Sunday Conversation: Ellie Goulding On Her Joyful New Album, Motherhood, Pearl Jam And More

At first glance it might seem strange that British pop superstar Ellie Goulding has made what she describes as her “least personal album” while pregnant for the first time. But indeed, Goulding’s Higher Than Heaven, released this past Friday (April 7), is her most purely joyous album yet.

Looking at artist’s motivations for the music they make, Goulding making Higher Than Heaven during this personal time is actually not surprising. As the great Nick Cave once explained to me, as an artist he always wrote what he was missing. So he wrote happy songs when sad and vice versa.

When I share that theory with Goulding while chatting with her in person in a L.A. hotel room the day after the Oscars she says it makes perfect sense. For her, this was the album she always wanted to make, even if she didn’t know she could do a record like this. “The idea now that I can write music like Higher Than Heaven, I just didn’t know that option was available to me, to be honest,” she says.

I spoke with Goulding at length about the new music, being an introvert, how motherhood has changed her, hanging with Finneas at an Oscar party, and playing these new songs live.

Steve Baltin: Talking with so many musician friends during Grammy week, it’s very inspiring to be around all of these creative people. You get to talk to people, figure out their process, learn what they’re doing.

Ellie Goulding: It does give you a boost. Like I was chatting to Finneas last night and chatting to Zane Lowe this morning, and it does re-energize you a bit. I’ve been living in London with my son. And I realize how much time I’m spending by myself, and occasionally getting in the studio, finishing bits of the album, doing other things. And then you find yourself with someone who loves or appreciates music as much as you, essentially just like music nerds, and I forget that it is so crucial to be around those people. I don’t think I am enough. I was talking earlier about collaborations and feeling like I’ve slightly abandoned that aspect of what I do. Not intentionally, because I’m just quite introverted. I did go to the party last night, but it’s not my natural habitat at all. I don’t like being around lots of people. Back in the day on tour, I would retreat back to my room. I would have a couple of drinks to myself and that was my night. I didn’t want to go and join the after party, which my band did. My band would go and do that every night ’cause they had friends come on and watch the tour or watch the show. So I’ve always operated like that. I’m always a bit of a lone ranger. And it does make me remember and realize, like talking to people like Zane this morning, who just knows so much about the way artists work. I was tired this morning and he completely injected me with excitement and enthusiasm for my album and for just music in general. And it’s so nice to also think again that like, and reminisce about the musicians that inspired me. And we were talking about the new Calvin [Harris] song and it just takes me back to that music I grew up listening to. So there’s been a nice bit of nostalgia recently for me.

Baltin: The person who explained what you were just describing to me better than anyone was Barry Manilow. He talked about how in the ’70s he would play these huge arenas, and then he would go back to his hotel and he had no friends and he would go sit in the room by himself after playing to 10 and 20,000 people. And it was the loneliest feeling in the world. Unfortunately for musicians on the road it’s a very isolated lifestyle.

Goulding: I can relate to that, yeah it is. And I feel like because I am naturally introverted, always have been since I was a kid, it’s really why I didn’t end up acting. I knew I was always meant to sing but I guess in the beginning I thought that acting was supposed to be my destiny or whatever. But I was just too shy to do it. So I ended up picking up the guitar and singing instead. And I thought that was normal. I thought that musicians did just go back to their room and then go back to the hotel. But actually it’s not. I was chatting to Charli XCX last night, and she’s done so many collaborations. I’m like, “Are they all hanging out somewhere that I’m not hanging out, or is it just that she’s reached out to people or they’ve reached out to her?” I also have a warped perception of how people see me as a musician. Some people see me in America see me as electronic pop artist, I guess. And the UK more of a ballady singer.

Baltin: Artists are by nature perfectionist. So you feel like what you’re doing is not good enough, even if everybody else likes it. A lot of artists don’t know what other artists necessarily think.

Goulding: Maybe it doesn’t f**king matter, what people think about me. But I wonder if that has affected me in that, I haven’t reached out to people or actively gone to things where I know other musicians are, ’cause I’m like, “Oh, what are they gonna think about me? Are they gonna, do they judge my music ’cause I make pop music?” I think that’s probably why I haven’t done as much collaboration and worked with other people as much as I’d like to.

Baltin: Who else is on the wish list of collaborators? You worked with some amazing people on this record.

Goulding: I am lucky, and that’s one thing that crushes my imposter syndrome. That the best producers in the world want to work with me, Always do, always up for it. And I get to pick people I want to work with. And artist wise, there are loads of singers now at this point I’d love to work with. I’d love to do something with Tems. I think she’s really got such an incredible voice. I can listen to her all day long. I’ve always loved Charli XCX. I’ve always wanted to do something with her, but maybe just write with her, ’cause she’s such a great songwriter. There are so many that I would love to work with.

Baltin: Have you found, as you were making this record, or more importantly as people start to hear it, that your perception of what other people think is changing, because one you have a kid what others think doesn’t matter as much?

Goulding: Yeah, there’s one thing that has to be sacred, which is when I’m in the process of making songs, I can’t let those thoughts creep into my head. “What are people gonna think about this?” And especially when I was making Higher Than Heaven, now I was pregnant, so all I could think about was, “I know it’s quite a big thing, suddenly being pregnant and it being a surprise.” And then just launching myself back into writing as if nothing had happened. And I think I was perhaps in this surreal bubble. It just takes over, it’s very hard to think about anything else. But the main thing with the album was, being pregnant and kind of just being in this little cozy bubble. But also it was directly out of lock down and I think nobody wanted to sit and write sad songs. And so it was actually refreshing to just sit and make music where I wasn’t thinking about my own feelings and stuff that I’d been through, which was really nice.

Baltin: It’s a fascinating thing now that you tell me that you were pregnant when you were writing it. Do you also feel like you were in a euphoric state maybe otherwise?

Goulding: Yeah, you do feel happy when you’re pregnant. That’s your body giving you all those happy hormones to make you feel happy about being pregnant and to take care of yourself. And so yeah, it was a relief to not feel those usual feelings of anxiety when I was pregnant. And maybe you go into a bit of work mode because, I think maybe part of me thought that having a baby was so wildly unpredictable that I thought, “Am I still gonna be making music after this? Am I just gonna wanna stay at home with my kid? Am I gonna lose interest? Am I gonna lose my voice?” It was just the unknown. For the first time ever, I couldn’t predict what was gonna happen for me.

Baltin: How did you feel about that?

Goulding: I’m someone who has to be moving all the time. Even houses, I always get this feeling of wanting to escape. I don’t know whether it’s my childhood or feeling I can’t ever be settled. I don’t have a childhood home anymore. I don’t have a place where I call home, and I think I’m trying to build that. I’m trying to build this house in the country and trying to make it my forever home. But I find that hard and whenever there’s an opportunity to get out on the road or to just keep on moving, I constantly search for properties even though I’m not looking to buy a house, or I’ll keep finding excuses to travel. And in lockdown it was an excuse for me to stay put. And I think I needed to do that. I needed to have some normality, make some cakes, read some books, pick up my guitar again for the first time in years. And I’m glad that it was forced on me, ’cause I think I really needed that. I’m such a sucker for just staying on the go. Even in lock down, I’d be out of the door in the morning, be out running, then I’d get back. I think I’m, like you said, quite restless. I have to constantly be doing things. But with my son, I’ve re-learnt patience and just sitting with him, watching him do things. It’s a playfulness that I haven’t experienced in a long time. Seeing him do things is injecting this patience and I think it’s changed my perspective a little bit. And also the thought of dragging him around with me [is] not that appealing. I don’t want him to have that life, but at the same time, I want him to come out on the road with me and have a little bit of that life. I think he’ll be back and forth, whereas I’ll just be out the whole time, I think.

Baltin: Since you do have this new perspective on things is it influencing your music?

Goulding: Yeah, definitely. I can picture it already, wanting to get off stage. When he is young, you want to pick them up, cuddle them, just hang out with them, feed them. Even now, he’s turning into a little toddler, [so] I think by the time I do get on tour, I’m sure I will want to get back to the room, FaceTime him and probably become even more reclusive than I already was before. But no, I haven’t got to a space yet where I want to write about motherhood. I’m sure it’ll come, I know it’ll come. But not right now. It’s taken me a while to just overcome the anxiety of becoming a mom. And it changed the chemicals in my brain. So I am just overcoming that and I think I’ll get to that place. But for whatever reason, Higher Than Heaven was never going to be a deep introspective album about me. And so now that I have Arthur, it does make me want to be at home with him, but at the same time I just want to work more. It’s a strange thing. It’s like I’ve definitely gone into work mode more than ever, but at the same time, wanting to be with him is quite tough. So I’m trying to find that balance.

Baltin: When you go back and listen to this album now, does it allow you to escape?

Goulding: I’ve always wanted to make music to escape. I didn’t have an easy childhood and I think there was sort of different interpretations of what was an easy or a hard childhood. It doesn’t matter like how much money you did or didn’t have, I think we all had unique experiences and just ’cause you had a privileged childhood it doesn’t mean that you had a happy childhood. Mine was just like poor and dysfunctional. And so when I first started writing I was writing about that and I was just putting my feelings down to paper and then trying to construct what I thought was a song. They were really s**te, but at the time I thought they were genius. So it started off as really hitting my sadness head on. I put a lot onto boys and into like the first guy I was ever in love with. I remember my sister was dating this guy, I went around to his house ’cause I had just pierced my chin and my mom said to my sister, “Get her out the house.” I guess I was going through something and I met what I thought was the love of my life and he was wearing like a Pearl Jam hoodie, I think. That was where my obsession with Pearl Jam started. I remember that gut wrenching, like ugh, all consuming feeling of being in love. And all I did was write about it and at the time we had like MSN Messenger. So I’m just waiting for him to come on MSN Messenger. But so my music has always been direct response to such intense feelings about my life [and] my childhood. I was falling in love every five seconds with someone and I was just like a big thinker, I was conscientious and I knew quite early on that I was sort of different from my family. And so the idea now that I can write music like Higher Than Heaven, I just didn’t know that option was available to me, to be honest.

Baltin: Have you done any of the songs live yet?

Goulding: I performed the songs once or twice, I did like some shows at KOKO London about a month ago and it just felt really good to perform them. I just got to sing, got to be a vocalist, I got to be a performer and it didn’t feel exhausting emotionally. It felt just good, like electric and alive. And, so I guess I just did not know that was an option. Now I do, so I think I’m going to just do a tour that I really enjoy. And obviously I’m gonna have to do songs from Light, songs from Halcyon and maybe a song or two from Delirium, maybe not. And then Brightest Blue, which I have to say is my favorite album. But maybe because it’s one of those things where there’s still a mystery to it ’cause I didn’t get to go on tour with it, I didn’t get to like breathe life into it, I didn’t get to see those songs come to life. So maybe that’s why I yearn for a Brightest Blue era that never happened.

Baltin: My gut instinct is that after doing the Higher Than Heaven tour and getting to do this fun tour, that the next album is going to be like this really introspective Joni Mitchell Blue.

Goulding: It will, I know it, it’s coming already. I’ve already been writing it and I’ve been writing things down that are so honest they even kind of shock me when I read them back. My anxiety has literally like took over my life at one point because I just couldn’t function, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t perform. And I was like, “Okay, so then my life is over then, because these are all the things that I do.” And Arthur was the thing that was such an antidote to that. We have a special bond obviously and my occupation was him, which is pretty much all new moms. There’s nothing else you can do and you don’t want to be away from them. And so I spent all my time with him and it was pure joy and then I’d go and lie down in bed and then suddenly my anxiety always comes to me at night, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that, but like, I don’t know, it seems to be a thing. So I feel a lot of stuff like writing will be centered around that because it controlled me and it kind of dictated how I spent my time. But, also at the same time, when I wasn’t feeling anxious, those times became really beautiful moments of feeling ecstatic to not be anxious. So as soon as the anxiety lifts, it’s like the sun comes out and I feel like this kind of joy for life again. So I’ve been thinking about a lot about the fact that I’ve simultaneously had the hardest year of my life, but also had opportunities to see life in a really beautiful way because I’m like, “This is how you’re supposed to feel in life. “