Goulding reminisces on the simplicity of youthful emotions. It’s soft and tender like any first love should be. It’s not so tropical as some of Kygo’s other works. In less than a month, it’s racked up more than six million views on YouTube, and that’s without an official music video. Goulding’s latest track is her first collaboration with Kygo. And while these songs can sometimes evoke other major players in her genre, she makes Max Martin’s signatures feel personal, making a mature pop record that feels like a natural progression.Calvin Harris' 20 Best Songs: Critics' Picksġ0. Her evocative storytelling and ability to craft great dance music is all here, but repackaged as something more emotionally tangible, ditching feel-good EDM lyrical logic for realness. And might I remind you that this is the person who wrote "Burn".ĭelirium grounds Ellie Goulding’s penchant for spectacle in tightly-written pop songs. Delirium manages to be a cool, dramatic pop album that rarely hyperbolizes what love is all about. A track like "Codes" might be dressed up in sexy language but the sentiment is clear: can we please put a label on this? "When love’s not playing out like the movies/ It doesn’t mean it’s falling apart/ Don’t panic," she assures on the stand-out "Don’t Panic", whose musical-box quality makes it sound like a polished Lights-era throwback. Nobody’s shaking off haters, bemoaning that same old love, or asking that you don’t tell your mother that you, uh, made out with someone? Granted, Delirium is fun, but the mood is upfront, Goulding’s romantic propositions more realistic demands than adolescent, yearning questions. "We got other things we can do with our," she sings flirtatiously in the verses of "Codes", stopping for a beat, before drawing out "tiiime" into a high-pitched lilt, but she moves into a punchy, shouting sing-song for the chorus.Īside from a little well-done sass ("You were talking deep, like it was mad love to you/ You wanted my heart but I just liked your tattoos") on the album’s single "On My Mind", there’s an adult sophistication to Delirium. Her voice is fullest in the jangly ballad "Lost and Found", where she keeps her straightforward vocals at the forefront.
Still, even when the songs here evoke other hits, they’re still bangers in their own right.Īnd Goulding’s signature vibrato and energy make even the more trend-chasing songs on the album fully hers.
The bubbly, "I’m sticking to you like glue" doo-wop of "Around U" feels particularly out of place among Delirium’s darker, deeper tones, playing like a better fit for Meghan Trainor than Goulding. "Keep on Dancin’" is a more minimalist sibling to Adam Lambert’s Martin-produced hit "Ghost Town" and while "Something in the Way You Move" might be a mighty fine song in a vacuum, Selena Gomez has already done it with "Me & the Rhythm". Elsewhere, she inches back to her dance music roots on the sultry house-leaning "Don’t Need Nobody" and the marriage of a scratchy acoustic loop with techno on "Devotion".īut while the best tracks here are the ones that transcend and build on pop trends, a few others merely copy them. TION or Taylor Swift’s 1989, with gushing vocals and Moroder-kissed synths on tracks like "Codes" and her Fifty Shades of Grey song "Love Me Like You Do".At times, the record exists in the same '80s-pop wannabe universe as Carly Rae Jepsen’s E While Halcyon was a dark collection that flitted between club-ready synth-pop and soulful, orchestral ballads, Delirium dives head first into the former with confidence. And Goulding, who went from being famous only in the UK to performing at the White House, very much deserves at this point in her career to have a third record fit with all the big pop trimmings. But after flirting with indie dance, then Calvin Harris and Starsmith-produced EDM, Goulding is adding some Swedes to her arsenal for Delirium: Max Martin, Carl Falk, and Peter Svensson, to be specific.
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