Ellie Goulding Takes Over the Troubadour
A week after releasing her second album, Halcyon, U.K. singer/songwriter Ellie Goulding has taken over L.A. for a series of shows, including a sold-out hour-plus set at the Troubadour this past Tuesday night, which you can watch here.
“I love being in L.A.,” she told Rolling Stone. “It’s the place I’ve been the most other than London. I have friends here and I know people here.”
It also helps that L.A. audiences have always made her feel welcome: “I feel like every time I’ve done a show here it’s been really special.” She’s still getting used to playing the new material live, but with a full slate of touring under her belt following the breakthrough success of Lights, she feels the Halcyon songs are better suited for the stage.
“One of the things I love about this record is it’s translated so well live,” she said. “I feel so happy about this record because, live, everything sounds as it should.
“When we started rehearsing Lights years ago for live shows, it didn’t translate in the way that I thought it would,” she added. “You expect when you make a record that everything will get out there and sound the same, and it does if you just have a backing track. It’s really important to me for everything to be live, so we don’t have anything on track, really.”
Without a lot of touring experience, she didn’t envision playing the songs around the world. “I didn’t think for a single second I was going to be performing those songs anywhere. I just didn’t really think about it,” she said. “It’s really strange.”
This time around, she made sure to take a lot more into consideration. That included the wide array of artists she’s seen live, from Bjork to Mumford & Sons. She says all of those artists influenced Halcyon – and not just her boyfriend, Skrillex. Plenty of media scrutiny has been focused on their relationship: “I feel like sometimes when I speak to people I don’t get to talk about me enough,” she admitted.
The two did record a song together, “Bitter Sweet,” which appears on the upcoming soundtrack to Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2. “We just wanted to make a song together, really. There was nothing more to it than that,” she said. “Someone ended up getting ahold of it, and somehow the producer from Twilight said that they loved the song and they wanted to use it as a theme song for the next Twilight. I really love it, and I’m really happy it’s on the soundtrack.”
But her number one priority is Halcyon, which she will start touring behind in January. Based on initial feedback from audiences, she can’t wait to come back when people really know the songs on the new album. “This one, I feel like the reaction is different,” she said. “You just respond to bigger noise and bigger sound. [And] people have said to me that Halcyon sounds bigger and fuller.”