Flux ➻ Prince Harry & Ellie Goulding

Epilogue

"I think now, it's so much more, not acceptable, but you can be so much more open with your friendships and it's okay to have a really close friendship with someone of the same sex or with anyone and there's no black and white anymore, which is great. I had those really close friendships with my girlfriends at that age and then some of my girlfriends are still with the person that they fell in love with at that age and they're now in their 30s and have kids with this person that they met at that age." Ellie said.

"You've put out a lot of huge tracks over the past fourteen years, all the way back to "Starry Eyed" in 2010. What are a few of your personal favorites? Has your relationship with your earlier tracks changed over the years?"

"Oh my gosh. My relationship with all of my early songs has changed. I only get them out on very special occasions. When I listen back to the songs and the lyrics, I do feel a bit silly at some of the lyrics. I feel like they're kind of immature and they're a real marker of that time, where I feel like I didn't know anything about anything and I would write a very naïve perspective of what I thought love was. When I think back to those situations, I think that actually was me a lot of the time in the raw or me doing something stupid. In the song, I maybe portray it as differently or the other person's fault. I do think about my old songs a lot in that way, but I don't regret writing them. Once time has passed, I keep having to move on with songs. They're real markers in the book that I keep writing. It's very hard for me to go back in time with them, but "Anything Could Happen" is a big favorite because I just remember being in such a happy place when I wrote it." Ellie answered.

"It was melancholy because I had just broken up with somebody, which as we all know is for some reason the most painful thing in the world, but at the same time I was back in my hometown writing with somebody that also lives in my hometown and we just came up with this song, and whenever I play it live it just has this euphoria and brings everyone together and I see people in the crowd just so happy and it has some kind of rave element to it that makes everyone go a little bit crazy. Yeah, so I have such good memories of that song and it was also just one of those songs I wrote in half an hour. It just happened. I also am very proud of the song "Flux," which I played earlier. I was just proud of myself for the honesty and the way that I managed to capture what I was feeling." Ellie said.

"Sometimes I'm like, "God, do I really want to write this about this person?" but sometimes I just have to tell the truth and even if it shows how emotional I am or shows my true colors or whatever, it just has to happen. That was one of those moments with that song. I'm proud of all the songs I've written. I'm proud of the huge cheesy pop songs and I'm proud of the more obscure weird ones, like when I first released a song called "Under the Sheets" on an EP with a song called "Fighter Plane," and I'm proud of how I was thinking at that age. I was maybe 20 and I was already writing in a somewhat mature way. [Laughs.] I'm having a proud moment." Ellie said.

"It's like the songs are the chapters of your life, and while the stories are super specific to you, so many people can relate to them." The interviewer said.

"I think subconsciously I've always written with other people in mind. Not in the sense that I want to please people, but I love the idea of providing people with a resolution, or with some kind of consolation for what they're going through. Music is one of the most powerful things in the world and we all speak its language. When I write lyrics, I understand how much of an impact they can have on people, so I'm always aware of that. When I'm writing about a breakup or I'm writing about the state of the world or the planet or whatever, I try and make it hopeful. If I could be described as being a musician that gave people hope, then I'd be really happy." Ellie said.

"You've worked with some really big names in dance music: Diplo, Skrillex and Calvin Harris, to name a few. Can you talk a little bit about what you've learned working with those producers?"