It’s hard to hear over the Inspiring, Motivational string arrangement and the Pasek-and-Paul chorus, but there are lovely sentiments about aging in public: “Free-falling through the photographs that paid my bills” might be the most evocative line on any Goulding album. “Woman” works by focusing on Goulding herself and how she’s grown, rather speaking for everyone else. When “Tides” breaks through the monotony, the skittering, trebly production feels too small to compete against the surrounding density.īeneath that density, there are genuine strides. This isn’t always a bad thing “Love I’m Given” updates the post-Adele songs from 2012’s Halcyon, even mimicking the looped vocal riff from “ Only You.” But after five or six other electronic-gospel hybrids, the title track doesn’t stand out. Though the crew is small by pop standards (including previous collaborators Jim Eliot and Joe Kearns), multiple songs feature real orchestras and real choirs competing with synthetic orchestras and Goulding’s own multi-tracked vocals. This is a crowded, obscenely expensive-sounding album. If Goulding intended to make an introspective record, that’s not what’s happening musically. But Brightest Blue has a unique problem: Its suffocating production undermines the more grounded lyrics. Pop music hasn’t been fun for some time, so a quieter record makes sense commercially as well as spiritually. A half-decade of EDM collaborations and false starts later, Goulding returns with Brightest Blue, an album about taking control of her life and identity-with a few proven hits tacked onto a bonus EP billed as Side 2. Its formulaic songs rarely took advantage of Goulding’s malleable, oft-sampled warble, leaving her with a distinctive voice in only the most literal sense. “ Love Me Like You Do,” a one-off from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack that she didn’t even write, achieved nearly a billion Spotify plays-but the subsequent album, 2015’s Delirium, yielded only one outright hit. Both “Lights” and “Burn” began as bonus tracks from modestly performing albums (2010’s Lights and 2012’s underrated Halcyon, respectively) before gradually crossing over. A folktronica artist who pivoted to mainstream pop, Ellie Goulding stumbled upon longevity in the 2010s with one fluke hit after another.
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