“Devotion” offers a subdued moment on this album; this hypnotic highlight sees Goulding at her most seductive and impassioned. That’s often hard when a popstar is paired with a hitmaking machine – even Katy Perry was lost in Martin’s production on her third record Prism. “It has a really similar sentiment and I can’t get bored of it”.
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“On My Mind” has a reggae aftertaste, and Goulding shows us briefly that she can rhyme too. Featuring production from Martin, the song feels like a proper lead single from a pop star. “I made a conscious decision that I wanted it to be on another level”.
It helps that the hooks are often insanely infectious – as evidenced on singles “Something in the Way You Move” and “Love Me Like You Do” (the latter from “Fifty Shades of Grey”). You can do a lot yourself now, so I think just generally music is really flourishing and there’s so much new stuff… It was a sensual, confessional record, one frank about love’s dangers and joyous when it blossomed, and it placed Goulding in an unexpected line. It’s immediately distinguishable and malleable to nearly any style.
Goulding said that this album would be a departure from her previous EDM-stylings and it is in a way but the electronic element is still there. It’s all Goulding’s, and the song took her from the periphery of pop stardom to the top of charts around the world.
After an intriguing album introduction, Delirium quickly dives into the typical punchy beats and auto-tune commonly associated with modern pop music.
Win 2 tickets to see Ellie Goulding at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on April 1, 2016. “It’s one of those movies you can’t really watch on an aeroplane”. “When you start an album around the time of a new relationship, that makes a huge difference, because you’re still in that fantastic phase of being completely in love and that reflects in the songs”.
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As with most pop albums of this size there’s a few serious culling that could’ve been done to make the album flow more consistently. The songs above aren’t just slabs of musical MSG pumped out of a factory – they’re immaculate shells that can’t become hits without the magnetism of the right artistic match. Whereas in the past Goulding sometimes seemed to be pulled into songs against her will, there’s nothing tentative about her now. She’s not comfortable churning out run-of-the-mill pop albums and as such Delirium is full of chopped vocal samples, weird synths and personable lyrics that set it apart from other big pop albums this year.
