Ellie Goulding has spoken about her commitment to attending Coachella regardless of her health.
The “Lights” singer recently revealed that she attended the annual music festival while she had food poisoning.
“Coachella one year, I had food poisoning. I was sh***ing my pants, and I still went,” she said in an interview with Nylon. “I had these leather shorts that had a zip up the back and front, and I thought, ‘These are the worst thing for my situation right now.’ I’d been performing in South America — with Lorde, actually — and I got food poisoning.”
Goulding continued, explaining how demanding her music career had been when she was first starting out.
“I remember having dinner with Ella [Lorde’s real name], and I had some kind of wrap, and it all went wrong,” the singer said. “But again, I do feel now there is more in place to ensure that we’re OK.”
She also reflected on how much her life had changed over the years, from coming from a working-class background and viewing music as a hobby, to deciding to leave college to pursue music full-time, to releasing her first album in 2018 and touring alongside big names like Bruno Mars and Katy Perry.
The singer admitted it was “impossible” to process what was happening to her and how that took a toll on her mentally.
“I went from never taking a flight, never being photographed, to singing at the royal wedding,” she said. “I don’t think my body knew how to process the contrast between my old life and my new life, and I don’t think I was equipped to deal with that amount of scrutiny, attention, and workload. I never stopped.”
“My body physically couldn’t function well, and my throat was dead,” she added. “I kept getting tonsillitis, I kept getting sick, and there was nothing in place then to ensure that I was OK.”
This sometimes led to canceling performances, which was not always kindly received.
“There were a couple of big things, like an awards performance, where I had to say no because I physically couldn’t do it,” Goulding said. “And I remember them being like, ‘You’ll never be able to perform [at the show] again.’”
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“I was like, ‘Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to have to die?’ There were things like that: ‘If you don’t do this, you will get repercussions.’”