A Brief Note On Ellie Goulding’s ‘Lights’

She may be the Brit Award winning BBC Sound of 2010 but Ellie Goulding still has to pass one final and crucially important test, The Counterfit ‘Seal of Approval’. Accordingly, whilst this electro-folk chanteuse can’t be blamed for being foisted upon the general public as the face of ‘new music’, she sure as hell can expect us to bust her chops for producing a thoroughly lacklustre debut album.

It really does give us no pleasure to label Lights as the worst LP we’ve heard this year so far. Our hopes for a collection of poptastic tracks in the vein of last year’s ‘Under The Sheets’ were dashed in early January by the insipid lead single ‘Starry Eyed’ but we still held out a bastion of positivity for the record itself.

Alas Lights conforms to that worst stereotype of atrocious albums. It is neither excruciatingly bad nor host to a smattering of diamonds in the rough but rather just plain dull. Goulding’s waif like voice has always been her Achilles heel and her decision to sink it in the midst of successively D.O.A. choruses as with ‘Guns And Horses’ and ‘This Love (Will be Your Downfall)’ is surely something that her co-producer Starsmith should have advised against.

Ellie’s promise was primarily posited on her ability to mesh the fragility of folk music with the euphoric nature of the electro-pop anthem. Her lyrical motifs often frame themselves around the transient nature of a lovers tryst yet as in the case of ‘The Writer’s delicate opening “You’re just a body / I can smell your skin / And when I feel it / You’re wearing thin”, any  allusion to subtlety is thrown out the window as soon as the drum machine roars into life.

It was recently reported that because of the considerable media frenzy surrounding her, Goulding had to take a trip to A&E in order to control the effects of a panic attack. Such an unreasonable amount of expectation attached to any individual would rightly cause them to question, “Why me?” On the evidence of Lights, an explanation escapes us.