written and produced by Ellie Goulding and Jim Eliot

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Yeah, compared to most of the other material I’ve put on the site,

this one’s (still) pretty recent. As I’m not quite as up on 21st century

pop culture as I am on the “classic” stuff, this one was originally

intro’d to me by someone I knew at the time. I’d listened to it a

number of times since, and it had started to grow on me. On top of

which, I’d been sort of... “hobby-watching” Zooey Deschanel’s sitcom New Girl around the same time. I call it “hobby-watching” because although I(’m in) love (with) Zooey, New Girl was never exactly my favorite show... most episodes were palatable enough, however.

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So these two elements came together in one pivotal episode of the show, in which—***spoiler alert***—Zooey’s character Jess and her friend, Jake Johnson’s character Nick decide to finally get together romantically—which of course every sitcom lover gets metaphorically off on seeing with their favorite characters. As I recall, Jess is about to head off, and goes to the elevator, and the elevator door is about to close, but suddenly Nick opens it again, which cues the opening bars of the song.

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Speaking of the song, back to it. Ellie is one of the youngest artists that will be represented on this site, at least for a while. When I got more acquainted with her, I took note of what a lovely young English muffin she indeed was. She was born in Hereford, at the tail end of 1986, and signed herself to Polydor Records at the age of 22. Her debut album, Lights, was released in two versions: the original 10-track, and a re-issue dropped the same day, called Bright Lights, including bonus tracks.

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As well as (Bright) Lights performed, its follow-up, Halcyon—“Anything Could Happen”’s album—did even better. It was eventually certified quadruple-platinum—double its predecessor—and nailed #1 on both the UK and Ireland charts. “ACH” made it to #5 in the UK. The next year, in 2013, Halcyon too got the re-issue treatment, turning it into Halcyon Days. As far as I’ve been able to find, “ACH” has had two different “official” music videos made for it—not an uncommon practice in the 21st century. But I don’t know if I can locate both any longer... let’s have a look. In the meantime, we can see that Ellie Goulding is also one of the last artists who seem to be going on releasing full-length albums into the 2020s, with Brightest Blue in summer ’20. Keep those “Lights” “Burn”ing for us, Ellie, and we’ll keep loving you like we do.

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Yes... okay, I’ve done the search. The other video is no longer anywhere to be found, but that is why I download videos I like. I still have it in my files; it can be e-mailed if anyone is interested. P.S. I feel the lyrics are sufficient and complete enough in this form below... being the uncompromising perfectionist I am, I could have taken the time to type out all the chorus “eee, eee, eee, eee-eee-eee”s... but in this particular case, even I found that a bit less than necessary.

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Have notes to add? Let me know!

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YT:

full version

music video

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Ellie’s official website