I knew absolutely nothing about Ellie Goulding, the new UK pop sensation who has sold out the Music Box, the night just after Paul Simon actually. When I read she was doing a free acoustic performance at the Los Angeles open air mall the Grove, just before her evening show,… I thought, yes, why not going?
She was actually singing to share her passion about running, support the organization ‘She runs LA’, and encourage girls and women to register for a 10K Nike-powered run on April 28th. This was rewarded by all kinds of goodies, like an ultimate girls’ night out at the Nokia theater, and a chance to meet Ellie and win tickets for her sold out show. Enough to bring the attention of many young girls? Sure, even that of a few young men.
She arrived, all pumped up, in pink and black Nike attires, with fluo yellow shoelaces and a cheerleader attitude, rather ready to go for a run than to start singing, but this is what she did anyway, sitting on a high stool and accompanied by two guys on guitar and keyboard.
Even though the brevity of her performance made it hard to really figure her out, she sang this kind of unmemorable songs with a lot of vocal modulation, a few high-pitched notes, some sort of calculated hesitations in the delivery, plenty of woah-oh-ah-filled sights and overall an organ Christina Aguilera would certainly not denied. I bet the recording version is fully auto-tuned.
May be it was her pink top and strawberry blond hair that she arranged all the time, or may be her buoyant attitude and bubbling persona, but I was seeing glittered stars and disco balls, and hearing light pop songs that completely vanished from my brain as soon as I left the Grove.
But once again, she has just sold out a 1300 capacity venue in Hollywood, and is already number one in the UK, so she must be doing something right.