Ellie Goulding's 'Brightest Blue' Finds Self-Love and Reminds Us of Broken Things
Deep down in my heart I could hear this sprite-infused channeled resonance of golden light, so angelic it sounded like it was dipped in mithril. Then I just realized it was Ellie Goulding, somewhere in my soul, telling me she came out with a new album called Brightest Blue.
I fell in love with Ellie Goulding songs back around 2010 when she was adding tracks to the Kick-Ass movie soundtrack and getting sampled by Chiddy Bang. Ten years later I see Brightest Blue is out, and think she must be on about her 11th album and 15th Grammy. Nope, it’s her fourth, which makes it worthy of swift, harsh, unrelenting public criticism.
Okay, we’ll go a little easy.
Listen along on the Soundcloud above if you like. This is a real-time reaction review to Brightest Blue by Ellie Goulding, with no prior research.
Sound good?
Headphones in. Volume UP. Enjoy.
Track One – Start featuring serpentwithfeet
I’ve seen a serpent with feet, and it looks more like the girlfriend who sexes your friend in a car than an Ellie Goulding song. Ugh, dad jokes, but it’s too late to delete it now. Honestly, I just finished the new Weeknd album (I was late to the Weeknd party). This is like a Weeknd beat tattooed with Ellie’s voice.
Track Two – Power
I love the lyrical dynamic – Ellie says it’s about being tired of the superficial nature of today’s relationships, but at the same time, you’re caught in a riptide of sexual attraction with that person and can’t pull away. Based on the heavy (even if a little cryptic) self-analysis of the first two tracks, I’m curious to see what kind of pain Ellie Goulding’s ready to dump out over the next 17 songs. Yeah, pain is entertainment – we’re a cruel species.
Track Three – How Deep Is Too Deep
I think Ellie Goulding is better than any other synth-pop songstress at making songs about being used by a man and wanting it to be more than sex. The production, the conviction. I dig it.
Track Four – Cyan
This is a short interlude, but the first 15 seconds of “Cyan” have that vibe of ambient, rising emotion, like Julianna Barwick’s “Inspirit”.
Track Five – Love I’m Given
It’s clear to me that Ellie isn’t going for a drastic change in sound on the album. She stays true to herself with loaded content about relationships and vocals that sound like they were born in the Ferngully rainforest… That’s a compliment!
Track Six – New Heights
Another song reflecting on the need for a man to validate you, but here she focuses on the joy that results in finding fulfilment from self-love.
Track Seven – Ode to Myself
A melancholy slow song that only lasts two minutes. The songs have an anecdotal feel to them, like a thought pops up and she turns it into a two-minute slow-pop self-history lesson.
Track Eight – Woman
A natural progression of the earlier reflections on her pride in self-love. It blooms here into a full confession of feelings on her place in the world as a woman and a woman artist.
Track Nine – Tides
I’m so distracted by an Ellie Goulding song that chants “Take those elbows off the table”. I’m sitting on the laptop, making sure my elbows aren’t on the desk. I don’t think anyone has ever described Ellie Goulding as a schoolmarm, so…we’ll leave it that way.
Track Ten – Wine Drunk
Just think of the level of artistic freedom you’ve reached when you can lay on a couch and get drunk and think “I wonder if thousands of people will want to repeatedly listen to me talk about this drunk couch moment”.
Track Eleven – Bleach
…is not what people should drink to cure Covid-19. Or maybe some should. Anyway, I know the sentiment, the wish to scrub an ex from memory. But do you really want to?
Sadness is a bathtub people love to fill with memory
and sit in for an hour until the water gets cold.
Track Twelve – Flux
I fully regret saying I looked forward to what kind of pain Ellie had to share with us. Sonically, this is my favorite. Lyrically, I’m a person who frequently splashes around in the things that were, and the things that could have been. Here, Ellie holds your head under the water.
Track Thirteen – Brightest Blue
Ellie says this song is her version of a “happy, peaceful place”. That may be, but it’s near impossible for the listener to feel happy after the last track asked you to look back on all your love and wonder why it’s no longer there.
Track Fourteen – Overture
An instrumental – dramatic, cinematic, operatic. Did not know the Russian opera was featured on this album. Oh, it’s not? Okay, carry on.
Track Fifteen – Worry About Me featuring Blackbear
Finally, an upbeat song! Kind of? A further commentary on the concept of the independent woman, Pop radio might be saturated with “Worry About Me” by September.
Track Sixteen – Slow Grenade featuring Lauv
When you listen to an album as a whole, you have to step back and look at the flow. It sounds like Ellie Goulding got tired of wallowing in broken relationships for 14 tracks, and woke up to make a marginally perkier song about…broken relationships.
Track Seventeen – Close To Me feat. Diplo and Swae Lee
I have no idea what to expect from a Diplo feature on Ellie Goulding’s soundtrack to melancholia. There’s optimism here! She and Swae Lee sing about their fresh loves AKA future break-up song material.
Track Eighteen – Hate Me feat. JuiceWRLD
Solid song and great collab. Between Ellie and JuiceWRLD, but just elicits a sadness towards JuiceWRLD. It makes sense why they’d be attracted to working together – she makes Emo Heartbreak Pop – he made Emo Heartbreak Rap.
Track Nineteen – Sixteen
Some of us reflect on age 16 fondly, like Ellie does, on the innocence of youth. Some of us reflect on age 16 as a transient wolf boy with webbed feet in the Northern Territories, tossed out by an angry den mother. Hey, we all live the best we can.
***
Brightest Blue is a sad reflection dressed in pop clothing. If your search is for an artist with “realness”, listen to songs by Ellie Goulding. Musically, “Power” and “Flux” have earned playlist spots. Lyrically, some songs felt too close, and
I wanted to put this album in a locked box
and throw it off the Brooklyn Bridge.
***
Artist Links:
Ellie Goulding website
Ellie Goulding Insta
Songs by Ellie Goulding to get you bothered:
Your Song
Human
Keep On Dancin’