Ellie Goulding might just be one of a whole host of talented female popstars currently tearing up the chart, but that doesn’t mean these ladies are rivals.
In actual fact the Lights singer credits fellow pop princesses Rita Ora and Taylor among her best friends – as well as model Cara Delevingne, who seems to be BFFs with everyone at the moment!
Ellie tells Cosmopolitan: “There are several girls I’m really close to and we are mental. Rita [Ora] I adore. She’s got a really good outlook on life – she’s really positive, hard-working and funny.
“Cara [Delevingne] and I have so much fun; we relate to each other.
“Me and Taylor [Swift] are similar in that we write about relationships, and we joke about that. We text and sometimes I only have to say one thing, and even if it’s cryptic she gets it.
“She’s an inspiration to me because she reinstated how honest you can be about a boy in your music. I thought maybe I should stop being so explicit at one point, then I slapped myself out of that: I’m always going to write about people.”
© Peter Pedonomou
Ellie has had plenty of action in her love life to provide material for at least a dozen hit albums, and she reveals that it’s quite a cathartic process to write about past relationships.
The 26-year-old singer-songwriter admits: “You might be with someone you think you know everything about, then it takes just one thing to throw it all into the wind.
“I wrote Anything Can Happen because I’d been in a relationship with Greg [James, Radio 1 DJ] for two years, who I absolutely adored and still do. Then that ended very unexpectedly and it threw me off.
“I didn’t expect another relationship for a long time after that. Then all of a sudden I met this other person [dubstep producer Skrillex], and it was crazy – it came from nowhere.”
Sadly things didn’t work out with Skrillex, but Ellie seems to be enjoying the single life, revealing: “It’s nice going home to bed on my own before midnight and watching Geordie Shore!”
The Brit Award winner also has a new perspective on things and claims she has never felt self-assured than she does now.
“My confidence has grown in the past year, as a woman… I feel strong in more ways than one at the moment… I feel very independent and feminist right now – I think maybe it’s being single.”
“I went through a time of being quite insecure. I’d convinced myself I was fat; I didn’t like my figure and I had a big nose.
“Now I’ve finally got to a place where I don’t focus on those things. I feel like I’m not changing for anyone; I’m doing it all for myself. Because there’s no one else to do it for.”
The full interview with Ellie appears in the January 2014 issue of Cosmopolitan, on sale 6th December. Also available in digital edition on Apple Newsstand.
For behind-the-scenes footage, please go to www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/elliegoulding
How much would like to be BFFs with Ellie? Tweet us @sofeminineUK!
