Some might flinch at the “artificiality” of this stuff - a word we often use to slag our pop singers and praise our auteurs. But even those inhalations have been grafted to the grid.

When so much modern pop exploits the tension between a singer’s breath and a drum machine’s rigid click-clack, Goulding’s music feels frictionless.Īccordingly, the best songs on “Delirium” are delightfully mechanical pop ditties about human physicality - “We Can’t Move to This,” “Keep on Dancin’ ” - and you can often hear Goulding sucking down big gulps of air before she launches into her loudest, longest notes. Goulding’s most compelling vocalizations seem to benefit from her expert phrasing and scrupulous digital editing, but in a way that feels unique to her. You’ll be swiftly reminded of your limitations, not only as a karaoke enthusiast, but also as a mortal trying to push melodic carbon dioxide across your throat, palate, tongue and teeth in real time. Goulding stands tall atop this crystalline mound of sound, using her staccato mewl to untangle a romantic riddle lurking in her subconscious: “ Why / I /got / you / on / my / mi- / -ind.” You can hear it loud and clear on the album’s most disorienting cut, “On My Mind,” which starts off similar to a recycled Police song, and quickly mutates into the hiccups of a love-sick Transformer. The beats, the hooks and especially her voice - a Bjork-inflected trill made to sound colossal through advances in digital recording technology and the sheer power of Goulding’s lungs. Goulding recently described “Delirium” as her “big pop album,” and it’s safe to assume that she is talking about its sound as much as its intended reach. Because while all contemporary pop stars are required to sing along with computer-generated rhythms, Goulding might be the only one who sounds as if she is singing from inside the machine. This is perplexing and unfair, especially when it’s so easy to hear Goulding as the more significant vocalist. Yet Adele has been heralded as our planet’s unanimous champion of all that is good and tasteful while Goulding has been roundly dismissed as a humanoid conduit of radio piffle. And they both have new albums filled with songs they built with the help of pop music’s current master architects, Max Martin and Greg Kurstin.

They’re both charming late-20s ladies with British accents, global ambitions, golden hair and golden voices. Ellie Goulding will not sell 3 million records this week, but aside from that, she has a lot in common with Adele.

Ellie goulding albums and songs