Ellie Goulding
photo: frank schwichtenberg · cc by-sa 4.0 ↗Elena Jane Goulding grew up in Hereford, England, teaching herself guitar and studying drama before leaving university to pursue music, and broke through in 2010 when she topped the BBC's Sound of 2010 poll and won the BRIT Critics' Choice Award ahead of her debut album 'Lights.' She built a signature sound around a fluttering, close-miked soprano and folk-rooted songwriting wrapped in glassy electronic production, bridging singer-songwriter intimacy with synth-pop scale. Across the 2010s she became one of Britain's most reliable hitmakers, moving from the folktronica of her early work to the arena-sized ballad 'Love Me Like You Do.'
Goulding has named Björk among the artists she holds in particular esteem, and the debt surfaces in her folktronica textures — an organic vocal set against brittle, glitchy electronic beds — and in a willingness to treat the voice as another processed instrument rather than a clean pop lead.
listen forPut on Björk's 'Hyperballad' and notice how an intimate, conversational vocal floats over a restless electronic pulse that keeps gathering mass; you can hear the same architecture in Goulding's 'Anything Could Happen,' where stacked, wordless vocal hooks ride a build of synth arpeggios.
Bush is one of the artists Goulding has singled out as holding in particular esteem, and the influence shows in her theatrical, high-register delivery and in songs that swell from a hushed, storytelling verse into an outsized emotional peak.
listen forCue Bush's 'Running Up That Hill' and its climb from a taut, pulsing verse into a soaring, near-desperate chorus, then play Goulding's 'Burn,' which follows the same restrained-to-euphoric arc and lets a fluttering vocal detonate into an anthem.
Goulding has cited Joni Mitchell among the songwriters she esteems most, and the mark is in her confessional, folk-rooted writing — plainspoken first-person lyrics and an unguarded, conversational melodic phrasing that persists even under her glossiest electronic productions.
listen forPlay Mitchell's spare, piano-and-voice 'A Case of You' and its diaristic, aching intimacy, then Goulding's stripped ballad 'Explosions,' where the arrangement pulls back to let a bare, confessional vocal carry the weight.