Ellie Goulding & Monsieur Adi

Ellie-Goulding

So, earlier this month one of our favourite new artists of the last few years, Ellie Goulding, began the warm up to the new album with a brand new track. In this case it’s a cover of The Weekend’s ‘High For This’. We’re kinda’ in two minds about it, to make us feel less conflicted about the track, the marvel that is Monsieur Adi has come along with a reMix that we are definitely in one mind about.

Our mind is split about the original version because, although it’s wonderful to be hearing Ellie’s voice again, it really is, we’ve missed it, the production is a bit too..well, it’s hard to put our finger on it. Chiddy Bang’s Xaphoon Jones style is just a little too US Hip Hop flavoured, which makes it a worry that courting the lucrative North American market may have stripped much of what we loved about Miss Goulding. The quirkiness, the vulnerability, the intimacy in Ellie’s songs and the Britishness of Starsmith’s (amongst others) production are what made us love her music. For those things to be stripped in favour of a slick American R&B Pop sound, or for her to put through the Cherrytree (her US label) AutoTune-generic-Pop machine, or for her to suddenly have big chucks of Skrillex on her music would be disastrous for her identity as an artist. We’ll see I suppose. Anyhoo, Adi is in the house, so it’s all good. And it really is. It things look bleak, all you need to feel better is Adi’s lush orchestration, which mixes with a laid back Electro beat that just seems the perfect match for Ellie. Of course it’s not the first time Adi & Goulding (which sounds like a buddy cop show) have danced together, but probably the most emotionally rich time. That Ellie chose Monsieur Adi for an official reMix leads us to believe, to borrow from Star Wars, ‘there’s still good in her’. I guess we just have to trust that she knows what she’s doing and that the songs come from artistry, not focus groups.