Ellie Goulding Thrills With New Single & Video, “Worry About Me”
Last week, Ellie Goulding previewed her new single, “Worry About Me” featuring blackbear. It’s been a year and a half since she released “Close To Me” in fall 2018 – with plenty of singles, soundtrack songs, and collaborations in between – and it looks like we’re finally getting close to Ellie’s next album. Publications report the still unnamed album comes out on June 5th! Today, fans can hear “Worry About Me” and enjoy its eerie new music video.
“Worry About Me” opens with old-fashioned, plinking piano and a chanted hook mentioning everyone you can worry about… but Ellie’s not among them. The song then explodes into its first chorus, booming hip-hop beats and synths playing under Ellie’s emphatic vocals. She jumps between bombastic delivery and songbird crooning, but always stays in control of her voice. A verse follows, Ellie describing good times… until her ex calls out of the blue. A spooky pre-chorus takes us back to the fiery chorus we heard before. The chant that opened the track serves as a post-chorus hook. blackbear raps the next verse and joins Ellie on the final chorus before the chant ends the song. It’s a total banger and our favorite new Ellie song since “Close To Me.”
The music video, directed by Emil Nava, is suitably unsettling. For some of the video, Ellie lounges on a floral, golden couch at odds with the wood cabin it’s in. Ellie herself also seems out of place in this rustic setting, wearing leopard-print heels and a white pant suit. Meanwhile, blackbear and his new twin loiter behind her. In other scenes, Ellie hangs out on the cabin’s floor with some brown hens. Later, casual in a tank and jeans, she drives an old car with the blackbear twins riding in the back. Sometimes the trio sits on a grassy hill; sometimes Ellie watches the boys fight outside. But digitally added blood on her face and glitchy transitions make the video far creepier, suggesting cultish practices going on. It’s a fun video to rewatch several times.
Watch the music video for “Worry About Me” below:
You can stream or download “Worry About Me” featuring blackbear from all the major music providers here.
Ellie Goulding and blackbear both spoke to Rolling Stone about the new song. Ellie shared:
“Worry About Me” is a song I wrote reminiscing about a time a guy wanted me at his convenience, just as I was getting over him. It is intentionally tongue-in-cheek because I’m not at all bitter, I just found it humorous. It was refreshing to write, in the sunshine of L.A., because at the time I was writing dark songs about my state of mind in New York.
blackbear also stated:
It’s a song with a passive yet descriptive message of independence, charisma and attitude while a statue of smooth still stands tall. I love this side of Ellie Goulding over this tempo and darker hip-hop production. Ellie, to me, is the voice of the U.K. and is a special artist and human. There was not a hint of hesitation or lack of enthusiasm to get this done asap and shoot a crazy video where I have a twin brother (dark Parent Trap for adults if you will).
Possible Songs On EG4
Ellie Goulding has been teasing a new album for a couple of years now. In addition to describing it as a continuation of her Halcyon sound, Ellie has also released several new songs over the past 18 months. So far we’ve gotten “Close To Me,” “Flux,” “Sixteen,” and “Hate Me,” not to mention three soundtrack songs, a lovely collaboration with Andrea Bocelli called “Return To Love,” a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “River,” and an appearance in Four Tet’s song, “Baby.”
While we have a lot of songs already, last October Ellie stated that her new album would feature no guest artists. That would eliminate “Close To Me,” “Hate Me,” “Return To Love,” “Baby,” and even “Worry About Me” from the tracklist options.
However, we’re still not quite sure. Ellie tagged #EG4 in teaser posts leading up to “Worry About Me,” yet earlier today, she tweeted out this message:
I�ve been happy releasing the songs I�ve written specifically for enjoyment and experiment and I�m lucky to be able to do that… is my album in that world? No… lemme have fun before I have to pour my heart out again
— Ellie Goulding (@elliegoulding) March 13, 2020
Is “Worry About Me” part of her upcoming album or not? If it is, what does that mean for her earlier collaborations? We shall see.
Beyond the released songs, we know a few song titles that are definitely expected to appear on the album. “Love I’m Given” is about her husband, Casper. She was “reflecting on how I finally felt I’d found this person that was loving me for the right reasons” and wrote the song about that. There’s also “Electricity,” a song “about a friend who had been cheated on quite cruelly for a couple of years.”
More About Ellie’s Upcoming Album
Ellie’s long-awaited new album will serve as the follow-up to her 2015 record, Delirium. We don’t yet have a title, tracklist, or release date for the forthcoming record. However, we expect to find out more in the coming weeks. In an October 2018 interview, Ellie did reveal that most of the songs she’s written are quite sad, written about things that have built up over the years. Luckily they’re “not reflective” of how Ellie currently feels. In contrast to previous records, Ellie’s new songs talk about “quite specific things that have happened in my life, and something specific that happened to a friend of mine.”
In an August 2019 interview with PaperMag, Ellie described her album as “very powerful” and a shift away from the sound of Delirium:
It’s written about my experiences over the past two years. It reflects on my career and this fucking mad chaos world we’re living in. It goes there, it goes really deep. I sing about becoming a woman and independence and finding a lot of love for myself, apart from – disconnected from – having a partner or needing someone…
At the time of that interview, the album wasn’t yet finished, but Ellie did say the new songs will sound most similar to “Flux.”
Coming Soon
Enjoy “Worry About Me” and its thrilling new music video. Ellie is preparing her upcoming 4th studio album, due out on June 5, 2020. Keep checking back here for all the latest music news.
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