Making a full-blown pop record like Delirium isn't a stretch for Ellie Goulding—she's seen booming, bright-eyed singles like "Lights" and "Anything Could Happen" become Top 20 hits, after all. Even when she was making low-key electro-pop, Goulding’s music has always played heavily with a high drama beyond reality. She’s good at selling stories, constructing big "us against the world" tracks for fans who want songs that play like fairy tales and battle cries like some dancefloor-ready Natasha Khan.
But after flirting with indie dance, then Calvin Harris and Starsmith-produced EDM, Goulding is adding some Swedes to her arsenal for Delirium: Max Martin, Carl Falk, and Peter Svensson, to be specific. And Goulding, who went from being famous only in the UK to performing at the White House, very much deserves at this point in her career to have a third record fit with all the big pop trimmings.
While Halcyon was a dark collection that flitted between club-ready synth-pop and soulful, orchestral ballads, Delirium dives head first into the former with confidence. At times, the record exists in the same '80s-pop wannabe universe as Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION or Taylor Swift’s 1989, with gushing vocals and Moroder-kissed synths on tracks like "Codes" and her Fifty Shades of Grey song "Love Me Like You Do". Elsewhere, she inches back to her dance music roots on the sultry house-leaning "Don’t Need Nobody" and the marriage of a scratchy acoustic loop with techno on "Devotion".
But while the best tracks here are the ones that transcend and build on pop trends, a few others merely copy them. "Keep on Dancin’" is a more minimalist sibling to Adam Lambert’s Martin-produced hit "Ghost Town" and while "Something in the Way You Move" might be a mighty fine song in a vacuum, Selena Gomez has already done it with "Me & the Rhythm". The bubbly, "I’m sticking to you like glue" doo-wop of "Around U" feels particularly out of place among Delirium’s darker, deeper tones, playing like a better fit for Meghan Trainor than Goulding. Still, even when the songs here evoke other hits, they’re still bangers in their own right.
And Goulding’s signature vibrato and energy make even the more trend-chasing songs on the album fully hers. Her voice is fullest in the jangly ballad "Lost and Found", where she keeps her straightforward vocals at the forefront. "We got other things we can do with our," she sings flirtatiously in the verses of "Codes", stopping for a beat, before drawing out "tiiime" into a high-pitched lilt, but she moves into a punchy, shouting sing-song for the chorus.
Aside from a little well-done sass ("You were talking deep, like it was mad love to you/ You wanted my heart but I just liked your tattoos") on the album’s single "On My Mind", there’s an adult sophistication to Delirium. Nobody’s shaking off haters, bemoaning that same old love, or asking that you don’t tell your mother that you, uh, made out with someone? Granted, Delirium is fun, but the mood is upfront, Goulding’s romantic propositions more realistic demands than adolescent, yearning questions. A track like "Codes" might be dressed up in sexy language but the sentiment is clear: can we please put a label on this? "When love’s not playing out like the movies/ It doesn’t mean it’s falling apart/ Don’t panic," she assures on the stand-out "Don’t Panic", whose musical-box quality makes it sound like a polished Lights-era throwback. Delirium manages to be a cool, dramatic pop album that rarely hyperbolizes what love is all about. And might I remind you that this is the person who wrote "Burn".
Delirium grounds Ellie Goulding’s penchant for spectacle in tightly-written pop songs. Her evocative storytelling and ability to craft great dance music is all here, but repackaged as something more emotionally tangible, ditching feel-good EDM lyrical logic for realness. And while these songs can sometimes evoke other major players in her genre, she makes Max Martin’s signatures feel personal, making a mature pop record that feels like a natural progression.
