Ellie Goulding was a metalhead and “Kerrang! girl” as a teen.
The ‘Easy Lover’ hitmaker might be a pop star with a penchant for a ballad, but she is a rocker at heart and can’t wait to get “shredding” the guitar on her next tour.
She said: “I’m going to play guitar pretty much the majority of the set when I start touring next year, because my album is coming out at the beginning of next year. Then I’ll have a year of festivals, I hope. That’s the plan for me. I am going to play guitar for most of it, which will just require a good amount of rehearsals. I’d love to get to a point where it’s just all natural to me. I’ve been doing a few tours with no guitar. It’s weird, but I guess I was more focused on singing.”
Reeling off the list of bands she loves, including System of a Down, Deftones and Spineshank, Ellie confessed she was never into indie bands growing up.
In an interview with Bustle, she said: “God, so many. I like System of a Down and a bit of Deftones — I love their song ‘Passenger’ with Maynard James Keenan from Tool. There was Killswitch Engage and Spineshank. [Laughs] I remember Spineshank. I basically bought Kerrang! every week and NME sometimes, but at the time I wasn’t an NME girl because I didn’t really love indie bands that much. It was always the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I love that band Glassjaw, more like hardcore. I was a proper Kerrang! girl.”
Her guitar heroes are Tom Morello, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton – though she branded the latter “a bit of a d***”.
Elsewhere, the ‘Lights’ hitmaker recalled being made to feel “really insecure” about her singing voice after she was told to “stick to playing guitar” because her vocals are “not to everyone’s taste”.
Asked if she’s always been a confident singer, she said: “No. I’ve always remembered this guy telling me I should stick to playing guitar because I’m really good at guitar, that my voice was really quite unusual and not to everyone’s taste. It made me really, really insecure. I wasn’t really the kind of person to be like, ‘Everyone can f*** off, because I’m going to sing anyway!’ I was really affected by what other people thought of me. I had impostor syndrome; I didn’t think I deserved any success. When you begin to shave off other people’s opinion of you rather than your opinion of yourself, your life becomes a lot clearer.”