Released: April 7
After letting loose on her experimental 2020 LP ‘Brightest Blue’, Ellie Goulding returns to her pure pop roots on her fifth album ‘Higher Than Heaven’.
Thirteen years after first rising to prominence as recipient of the BRITs Critics’ Choice Award, the singer-songwriter has enjoyed a seemingly-unstoppable run, notching up three chart-topping albums and No. 1 singles in the process.
While Ellie’s previous album saw her expand her musical horizons with elements of indie pop and R&B, this time around she reverts to the synth-heavy, electronic sound that characterised her massive 2013 hit Burn.
“There was definitely a darkness about [the past two years] that was palpable in the studio, with everyone having gone through it differently,” she says of the project. “I think for that reason, nobody wanted to sit and agonise over some relationship or some drama. So that’s how this album came together.”
“[‘Higher Than Heaven’ is] about being passionately in love. But it’s a hyper form of love, almost like a drug induced feeling. It feels almost artificial and there’s the potential for a crash.”
Opener Midnight Dreams is indicative of the sound that runs through the LP, with pulsing synths and dance floor ready beats leaning into an undeniably eighties soundscape while remaining effortlessly cool.
With eight of the album’s 11 songs made available ahead of release over the past 10 months – including tracks 1-8 – much of the record is already familiar and third single Like a Saviour, promo cut Love Goes On and recent digital release By The End of the Night are among the early highlights.
Of the fresh tunes, Waiting For It – the album’s one explicit track, on which she bluntly suggests ‘We can fuck the world away’ – injects new energy with a cool R&B vibe, but it’s deluxe songs like the Jessie Ware-esque Temptation and sad banger Tastes Like You that really stand out across the complete 16-track offering.
As her Calvin Harris collaboration Miracle heads towards the top of the charts, there’s no doubt Ellie is hot property, but the singles from ‘Higher Than Heaven’ have struggled to gain traction and the album as a whole suffers from over-saturation of similar-sounding bangers that dilutes the overall LP.
That’s not to say it isn’t a good album – its a fine pop record – but buried in the extended ‘Higher Than Heaven’ universe is some of her strongest material that, had the tracklist been refined, could quite possibly be her best offering yet.
‘Higher Than Heaven’ is out now.
