Ellie Goulding Admits Feeling Intimated While Working for All-Male Studios

Ellie Goulding recently revealed how she felt intimidated and vulnerable while working in the all-male studios where she began her singing career. The “Love Me Like You Do” hitmaker even adjusted her style and outfits by wearing baggy clothes and avoiding makeup so she wouldn’t create any distractions.

While speaking to Radio 4’s Today Programme, Ellie mentioned how some of the male producers would ask her to go for drinks. Some of them had romantic innuendos that were improper for the workplace. The 36-year-old star added that these advances were the “currency” in the music industry.

Ellie revealed that young musicians today have more protection compared to 2010 when she was just starting. After establishing her own recording label, she’s keen on ensuring that counselors and chaperons are more readily available for new talents. 

Ellie shared, “It was very obvious to me that I was a woman with mostly men around me. And it was a bit intimidating, and there were times where I felt a bit vulnerable, and then when I went into the studios years down the line, I still felt that vulnerability.”

She added, “I’d often go by myself. I spend a lot of time alone, so I just stumbled into studios alone, and it would often be with male producers, so that was always in the back of my mind.”

Ellie went on, “I would go to the studio purposefully in baggy clothes, things like that, not because I thought anything was going to happen, just because I wanted to be there to work and not to have any distractions for myself or anyone else.”

As a guest editor for Today, Ellie visited her old school in Hereford where she talked to the students about what it was like working in the music industry before the #MeToo movement.

Recall that #MeToo began in 2017 after several allegations of sexual abuse against Harvey Weinstein surfaced. Harvey was a film producer who was later imprisoned. His conviction prompted several high-profile stars to come forward with their own experiences of abuse and assaults from prominent Hollywood men. It caught on and became a global movement that spread to other industries beyond entertainment.

Ellie emphasized that #MeToo was “really, really important” because it encouraged more people to share their experiences. She said to BBC, “I had experiences which, in my head, I sort of normalized and thought, oh, ‘maybe this is just a thing.”

“You know, when you go into a studio, and afterward, the producer asks if you want to go for a drink. And I’m quite polite; I don’t like letting people down. I don’t like disappointing people. It was like an unspoken thing where if you’re working with male producers, that was almost like an expectation, which sounds mad for me to say out loud, and it definitely wouldn’t happen now.”

Previously, the singer has also spoken about her feelings of guilt when the #MeToo movement started. Though she had her fair share of sexually loaded situations, she kept quiet at the time because she was too scared of being judged by the public.