I always enjoy checking in with her as she’s occasionally fantastic, but the reality is that Burn/Love Me Like You Do poisoned the well for her in terms of her artistry and she’s spent years very obviously bending to the whims of A&R men whispering in her ear and the temptation of smashes for easy cash. Some of the stuff she’s put her name to over the years is.. unbecoming.
I do often wonder how different things would be if she hadn’t had that series of hits, and what kind of fanbase she might have had - I look at Florence + the Machine who’s built up a catalogue of decent singles and a superb touring reputation without compromising, while Ellie still just seems like she’s stumbling around in the dark trying to find who she is. It could’ve been a lot different.
I’d love to hear just a back to basics acoustic songwriter album from her because I think deep down she’s a really good songwriter, but I just dont know if her taste level is there anymore.
I’ve been playing the Halcyon album recently. It’s probably my favorite of hers. It’s so gorgeous. The Jim Eliot songs are lovely, but I love the Billboard and Monsta productions.
She really was so lucky to fall into the peak EDM era for those produced songs (The Ending/In My City/Ritual/Figure 8) plus all of the various remixes that sprung up, especially on the massive 29 track release of Halcyon Days The Remixes.
I’ll always always always recommend the Halcyon Remixed 13.1 release as Halcyon’s experimental dark horse sibling with how creatively a lot of the album had been reinterpreted by lesser known EDM producers and artists at the time.
I don’t really agree that “some of the stuff she’s put her name to is unbecoming.” She has a few turds but who doesn’t? She’s chased hits but who hasn’t? Beyond a couple of rogue EG.0 singles the quality of her albums has been consistently good to great.
I do think the label just hasn’t known how to market her. Is she a big pop girl? No but she’s had huge hits. Is she an alt-pop girlie? Not really. Pop, electro, R&B, acoustic? All of the above, sometimes. I think a song like Start with serpentwithfeet - or indeed Destiny - is probably what she’d love to be doing. But it’s rough out there for anyone who’s had big hits - you follow your instincts with low-key material and a flop narrative will build. Plus labels are still a business and want return on investment.
Throw in the fact that dance music - not a genre that typically builds a loyal fanbase - has yielded huge success for her and it’s a tricky space she’s in.
I don’t tend to take Ellie’s criticism of her past work too seriously because I have the impression that she’s just very self-conscious as an artist and has never really been able to find peace with the kind of artist she wants to be and be seen as. The tug of war between wanting to be accessible and sell records versus wanting to be taken more seriously or please her original fanbase will most likely always be there, and the result is going to be the constant sharp pivots that have defined her career since Halcyon.
She’s quite fascinating in some ways because she’s released quite a large amount of music at this point and I have no real idea how much of it she liked at the time or likes now. Lights is not her only good album but it is the only album of hers that I’m reasonably confident was not built from the ground up to please an external audience she was fixating on at the time. Every album since then has in some way felt like a response to how the previous one was received and how she felt about that.
I mean thats the point isnt it. When people say “who cares” if she dislikes her own material, its like… well what does she like? What does she want to release?
The Delirium rollout was a bit of a mess but I also think she realized that she was not meant to be some big capital P popstar during that era, which was what that era seemed to attempt to label her as.
The moment I remember very vividly from Delirium rollout was multiple versions of cover showing up on the internet, where the only different thing was the font and its color, as if the intern couldn’t decide which one would be more unreadable.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Ellie. Her music is actually for the most part very emotive, well written, genuinely moving and fun. And also very well produced. She just tends to get a bit lost when it comes to trends in sounds and ends up making songs in styles that don’t really suit her. She should really consider going full on electropop for her next album. The sound of her debut is getting slightly trendy within the micro-genre world and I think reviving a little bit of that glitchy, dreamy, folktronica-influenced production style of Lighs and Bright Lights would be a great idea.
