Goulding’s Good To Go

Drew Goodsell got value for money from Ellie Goulding’s lengthy set at the O2 arena.

Drew Goulding cropped

Thursday 24 March was the penultimate date in the European leg of Ellie Goulding’s ‘Delirium’ tour, with the last two concerts taking place at East London’s O2 Arena.

Ellie herself is now preparing to go global, with a world tour running from April until October.

At the O2, tickets cost £36.50, with a £1.50 admin charge per person for a seat in Block 103, one of the rear corners of the lower tier at the arena. I thought at that price it wasn’t bad in relation to other ticket prices I’ve seen elsewhere.

The musical entertainment started shortly after 7pm, with the first of two support acts taking to the stage. LANY, a three-piece from Los Angeles, categorised as an ‘alternative dreampop’ band, performed a small collection of their songs for little under half an hour, to a small collection of people gathered around the front of the stage.

Drew LANY

I was totally unaware of the band’s existence before the event, and learnt little about them or their music to warrant keeping tabs on them in the foreseeable future. Their performance on the night wasn’t too bad – but that’s about as much as I can say.

After a short interlude, the second support act came out, and to my surprise, it was a relatively well known artist. Yorkshire born John Newman was given 45-minute slot, which was plenty of time to fit in his best-known songs.

The 25-year-old performed a few songs from his latest album, Revolve, released late last year, including tracks such as ‘Tiring Game’, ‘All My Heart’ and ‘Come and Get It’. He also performed a couple of older tracks from his first album, Tribute, released back in 2013, such as ‘Cheating’ and ‘Love Me Again’.

Drew John Newman

PerformingNot Giving in’, the Rudimental track released with Newman as lead vocalist, he started with a stripped back version, with only vocals and a piano, before going over to a big sound including trumpets, drums and bass, which made a big impression. He also performed ‘Blame’, which hit Number 1 in the UK chart back in 2014 when released as a Calvin Harris track with Newman as lead vocalist. Shame he didn’t do ‘Feel The Love’, released by Rudimental in 2012 – one of my all time favourites.

The reason 20,000 of us had come to the O2, came on stage at precisely 9pm. Complete with huge gold curtains and a backdrop of flickering gold lights, Ellie Goulding took control – although to increase anticipation she stayed hidden behind the curtains for the first verse of the first song, with a spotlight showing the audience her silhouette. Then when the drums crashed in the curtain dropped revealing Ellie Goulding on a raised platform, prompting a loud cheer from admiring fans in the audience.

The tour, entitled ‘Delirium’ after the latest addition to her discography, is something of a farewell to her admiring fans and to her musical career, since Goulding announced in early March 2016 she’d be ‘taking a break from music’ at the conclusion of her world tour.

Most of the tracks she performed were taken from the album Delirium. ‘Aftertaste’, ‘Holding on for Life’ and ‘Something in the Way You Move’, were followed by better known tracks such as ‘Army’, ‘On My Mind’ and ‘Love Me Like You Do’, which was the theme song to the film 50 Shades of Grey released in 2015.

Drew Ellie Goulding

Ever since it occurred during an Adele gig, a fashion has developed for someone in the audience to propose marriage to their partner during a romantic song at a high profile concert. I half-guessed it was going to happen, and at Ellie Goulding’s gig it duly came about in the middle of ‘How Long Will I Love You?’ – the song associated with the 2013 Children In Need appeal. The young lady duly said ‘yes’ – imagine if she hadn’t! And the whole thing left me wondering how long this trend will go on……

With the addition of popular songs from previous albums, such as ‘Burn’, ‘Goodness Gracious’ and ‘Figure 8’ from Halcyon Days, released in 2013, and ‘Your Song’, the cover of the Elton John original, from the album Bright Lights, released in 2010, Ellie Goulding’s set went on for almost two hours, until close to 11pm.

Being at the O2 Arena for nearly four hours, the ticket price seems more than reasonable, and I’d pay that again. To be honest, Ellie Goulding isn’t my first choice of artists to see (Goulding was my girl-friend’s preference rather than mine), but I certainly think we got value for money.

And to anyone who says my attitude to music is like paying for books by the yard (to fill up the bookshelves I haven’t got), let’s just say that if the two of us had come away from the O2 feeling we’d been ripped off, it would not have made for a good Bank Holiday weekend!

For a feel of the live performance, and an excerpt from each song, click on the link below:

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