Ellie’s lyrics have never been her strongest asset but they have never been more clunky than on this album. And rightly so! Out of the 13 songs on the main album (3 of which are interludes), only a handful of songs are worth listening to.Īlbum opener Start is a chore to listen to! It plods along for an unnecessary five minutes and also features a pointless verse by Brooklyn based experimental musician sepentwithfeet. Having actively disliked the pre-release singles initially, I had very little hope for the main album. But then came the first single off the main album – Power, which sounded very much like a bedfellow to all those pre-release singles. All along, we were given the impression that these songs did not represent the main album. The album was preceded by a bunch of American-radio-friendly R&B-influenced pop numbers featuring recent hip-hop and R&B stars – possibly to build stream counts? All these pre-release singles were tagged onto a second disc, cleverly titled EG.0 (to be read as “ego”, signifying an alter ego). But, it ranks least her catalogue for me. I won’t go as far as saying that Brightest Blue, Ellie’s fourth album, is a bad album. Either she has absolutely no idea what makes Halcyon brilliant, or she’s just faking it to promote the new album, only to disregard the album a few years later (like she recently did with her third album). So when Ellie said in a recent interview that her new album was a lot like Halcyon, I was certain that the screws in her head had come loose. It’s no wonder that Halcyon was praised by fans and critics-alike. That album turned out to be just so damn good everything that followed it paled painfully in comparison! On Halcyon, Ellie used her voice not only to sing, but also as an instrument on so many songs. Ellie’s voice has a magical two tone, which she has used brilliantly on Hanging On and the rest of its parent album, Halcyon.

The best example of this would be on her 2012 single Hanging On. Ellie Goulding is one of few artists with a great voice.

Ellie goulding albums in order