Ellie Goulding just pulled back the curtain on one of music's most brutal backstage secrets—performing through violent food poisoning at Coachella while wearing leather shorts that became her personal torture device.
"I was dealing with a messy situation, but I still went on stage," Goulding revealed in a raw new interview. "The leather shorts with zippers made everything worse. This was after touring South America with Lorde where I picked up the illness from a wrap we shared."
The "Love Me Like You Do" singer described how female artists in the 2010s felt forced to push through illness to maintain visibility. "My body was failing, my throat was shot. I kept getting sick, and there were no safeguards in place," she confessed.
Goulding's journey from quiet life to royal wedding performer came with shocking industry threats. "For big events, I had to decline when I couldn't perform," she said. "I remember being told, 'You'll never perform here again.' My response was: 'Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to have to die?'"
Lorde and Ellie Goulding pictured in May 2015. Rabbani and Solimene Photography/Getty
The singer, who debuted in 2010, described feeling completely unprepared for the intense scrutiny and workload. "I went from a quiet life to singing at the royal wedding," she said. "I just kept going, even when my body was screaming stop."
Goulding now celebrates the industry's shift toward openness, crediting the #MeToo Movement with creating space for artists to be real about their struggles. "There's more support now to keep artists healthy," she noted, contrasting today's environment with the punishing expectations she faced.
Her Coachella food poisoning story has gone viral, with fans calling it a shocking example of what artists endure behind the glamour. The leather shorts detail has become symbolic of how performers often hide physical suffering to meet industry demands.
