NEED TO KNOW
- Ellie Goulding spoke to Nylon for a new cover story interview
- The “Lights” singer recalled physically struggling to adapt to the demands of pop stardom following her rise to fame
- “Coachella one year, I had food poisoning. I was s—ting my pants, and I still went,” Goulding told the outlet
Ellie Goulding had a rough experience at Coachella one year.
In a new Nylon cover story interview, the “Lights” singer, 39, recalled physically struggling to adapt to the demands of pop stardom following her rise to fame — and once performing at Coachella with food poisoning.
“Coachella one year, I had food poisoning. I was s—ting my pants, and I still went,” Goulding told the outlet. “I had these leather shorts that had a zip up the back and front, and I thought, ‘These are the worst thing for my situation right now.'”
She explained, “I’d been performing in South America — with Lorde, actually — and I got food poisoning. I remember having dinner with Ella, and I had some kind of wrap and it all went wrong.”
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Goulding didn’t always feel like the music industry was supportive of an artist facing difficulty amid a busy schedule. These days, she said, “I do feel now there is more in place to ensure that we’re okay.”
But that wasn’t always the case. At the beginning of her career, Goulding said, “I went from never taking a flight, never being photographed, to singing at the royal wedding. I don’t think my body knew how to process the contrast between my old life and my new life, and I don’t think I was equipped to deal with that amount of scrutiny, attention, and workload.”
“I never stopped,” added the star, before detailing a far more recent scenario where one of her “best friends” met her boyfriend, Beau Minniear. Goulding explained the friend “was telling Beau that one time he had to intervene because I was going straight from one thing to another. If you were trying to make it in music as a female singer, you had to do everything.”
During those early years as a famous musician, Goulding’s “body physically couldn’t function well, and my throat was dead.” She frequently came down with illnesses including tonsillitis, “and there was nothing in place to ensure that I was okay.”
At one point, she even turned down an awards show performance due to feeling physically unable to accomplish the task. “And I remember them being like, ‘You’ll never be able to perform [at the show] again,'” she noted. “I was like, ‘Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to have to die?'”
Goulding — whose new single “Destiny” came out in November as the first taste of her next album — added, “There were things like that: ‘If you don’t do this, you will get repercussions.'”
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