It’s a relief that Ellie Goulding didn’t opt to make an album entirely post-divorce, because some of the lyrics you’ll find in ‘I Know Too Much’ are really hard-hitting. In 2024 the artist separated from her husband Caspar Jopling, and the new tracks often reflect a relationship that was dying and couldn’t have been any more toxic.
Goulding keeps readers guessing when explaining the single ‘Black Prada Dress,’ claiming that lines like “you first tell me I’m pretty, and then that it’s the light” can come from an inner voice. The worst part of herself. But nothing can disguise the kind of relationship portrayed by tracks such as ‘Jealousy’ or ‘Loser’.
In the latter, she taunts: “you’ve got a new job, a new life, a new girl, and that’s fine, you can change all your outfits, but you’ll still be a loser.” As if that weren’t enough, there’s a jab at the moment he told her: “don’t even think about writing about me.”
‘Always Think of Me’ compares old love to a bad shot that leaves a terrible aftertaste, and the very Chappell Roan ‘For Your Entertainment’ is cynical to the limit: “use me for your own gain / I’ll mold myself into whatever you want.”
By mid-album both ‘4 Seasons’ and ‘Nobody Dances’ surrender to new loves, and the record ultimately arrives at a piano-house catharsis, bidding farewell with the optimistic ‘Ravers.’ Ellie Goulding is well known for her dabblings in dance music, both from her own records and on others’ (notably Calvin Harris), and here she has not restricted herself to the lachrymose. It isn’t her best banger; this time the strength lies more in the compositional level of ballads like the aforementioned ‘4 Seasons’.
In an album that houses acoustic tracks that roughen with the bile of the more vindictive Alanis Morissette (‘Always Think of You’) or the 80s party vibe (‘Nobody Dances’ sounds like a Carly Rae Jepsen track), Ellie Goulding keeps delivering. After humorously announcing it as her least personal album, she has probably delivered the most confessional of them all.
