Ellie Goulding to tour Australian arenas in October
BRITISH singer Ellie Goulding has revealed her Grammys performance nerves and her tricks for preserving her voice as she prepares to tour Australia.
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BRITISH singer Ellie Goulding has a few tricks for preserving her voice in the throes of a worldwide tour.
One sure fire way of keeping her voice intact?
“Not doing interviews.”
Goulding is sort of joking. Kind of.
“I just drink tea, rest my voice when I can, try not to do interviews before shows,” she says. “I still get made to do them but I try and keep talking to a minimum.”
Unfortunately for Goulding, she’s obliged to chat — even the morning after her Grammy performance — to promote her Australian tour in October.
The Grammys were Goulding’s big moment on American TV. She performed her global hit Love Me Like You Do, taken from the 50 Shades Of Grey soundtrack, which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Song Written For Visual Media.
Goulding shared her Grammy performance with R&B singer Andra Day.
“I was a bit nervous, but I was performing with Andra,” she says. “When you’re performing with someone else you owe it to them to not be too nervous. I just shook it out of me.”
Goulding missed out on that Grammy but won at least part of another gong — she played Destructa X in Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood video, which won Video of the Year.
“I wasn’t on the set for that long but it was a fun thing to do,” Goulding says.
Goulding is part of Swift’s “squad” of female friends and accompanied the superstar to the Grammy afterparties, celebrating Swift’s 1989 winning Album of the Year.
Swift’s speech picking up the award referenced Kanye West’s rap saying he made her famous by invading the stage during an MTV award show in 2009 — the infamous “Beyonce had the best video of all time” moment.
The pair had made up until West’s song Famous, which also included a line about saying he felt he and Swift would eventually have sex.
Swift’s used to speech at the Grammys to address West in a classy way.
“To all the young women out there, there are going to be people who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame,” Swift said.
Goulding, who doesn’t directly discuss the West incident, glowed watching in the audience.
“It was a magnificent speech, it was perfect,” Goulding says. “I was a very proud friend.”
Goulding scored two major hits — Outside and I Need Your Love — with DJ and producer Calvin Harris.
She is reportedly the matchmaker behind Harris dating Taylor Swift.
But Swift’s squad know what’s off limits.
“Can we not talk about that, if that’s all right?,” Goulding says.
Goulding’s latest album Delerium features several songs written with pop king Max Martin (also the man Swift worked with on 1989) including Love Me Like You Do and On My Mind.
Martin has a reputation on being a stickler for lyrics when he does co-writes.
“That’s because he’s the greatest pop writer in the world,” Goulding says. “You would be wouldn’t you? He allowed me to still be myself as an artist and write what I wanted to write. It didn’t feel like I was compromising or constricting myself or anything which is nice. I was in awe of him. Once you work with his team it’s very addictive.
“You don’t go into every writing session thinking you’re going to make a big pop song, but obviously Max’s camp just keep writing big, big songs. You definitely always expect something magical to happen.”
The Delirium world tour features a large amount of songs from the album, which peaked at No. 3 in Australia, the US and UK last November.
Her breakthrough single Starry Eyed has been given the boot from the latest tour and her US hit Lights only surfaces as an occasional acoustic request.
“We don’t play that many from (debut album) Lights, it’s so old to me now that album. I’m sure my hardcore fans would love me to play more songs from Lights, but there’s so many songs. It’s a tough call to leave those songs out but I’m more focused on the new songs. We haven’t performed them so much so they’re fresh to us.”
The tour keeps hits Burn, I Need Your Love, Anything Could Happen and Love Me Like You Do kept until the end.
“You’ve got to have a good solid ending,” Goulding says.
After playing clubs and theatres in Australia, this tour will upgrade to arenas, with UK act Years & Years along for the ride.
“There’s been a progression over the past five or six years,” Goulding says. “I like that it’s been that way. It’s given us time to get better and get stamina and have proper experiences.
“Whenever people ask me what the trick to putting on a good show is it’s just muscle memory and doing it over and over again. Getting to a point where you don’t overthink it any more and you can just go out and do it effortlessly without having to be nervous or not know the stage. We’ve got to the point where we’re a really established live act, we’re playing some of the biggest festivals in the world, it’s pretty sweet.”
Ellie Goulding, Brisbane Riverstage October 5. Allphones Arena Sydney October 7. Rod Laver Arena Melbourne October 8. Adelaide Entertainment Centre October 10. Perth Arena October 12. On sale midday Thursday, frontiertouring.com
Originally published as Ellie Goulding to tour Australian arenas in October
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