Saturday 19 October 2013

Starry Eyed, Ellie Goulding at the Hammersmith Apollo : LOCAL LOVES

London loves music. There's no doubt about it. The music scene is incredible in this city.

I went to see Ellie Goulding at the Hammersmith Apollo this week and had a bloomin' brilliant time. I went with my uni friend Louise (she's a black belt in karate and knows more about Harry Potter than JK Rowling) which was a lovely excuse to see her. She works at Woburn Safari and lives near the park in the gorgeous countryside so I don't get to see her much - the animals don't tend to work normal office hours you see.



 Again, this was another first for me - I've lived close to Hammersmith for three years now but had somehow missed out a visit to the Apollo. Well, when Ellie came along I couldn't say no. I'm a MEGA fan and people always say that I look like her, even strangers, very odd! So I thought I should grab a ticket and say hi to my long lost twin.



We got there a bit late so did our best 'polite elbowing' to get nearer to the front - Louise was much better at it then me, I reckon it was because of her ninja skills.

As a little aside - I wasn't expecting the inside of the Apollo to be so nice to be honest - the foyer is flooded in mint green light there are two swanky white bars shining in the corners. Fancy.


Ellie opened with a total corker -  Figure 8. It's a really bass-y track from her second album Halcyon and the crowd loved it. Other highlights were her acoustic version of Guns and Horses and a very emotional performance of I Know You Care which is about her dad. My absolute fave Ellie song is Joy; it's an album track so hasn't had much coverage but there's a lovely live version here - such a damn good voice! She really gave it some welly on the night and I just loved it.






One of the best bits of the night though had to be My Song - the version Ellie did for the John Lewis Christmas ad a few years ago - I took a little video which I keep watching back, the entire crowd was singing along so loudly you could hardly hear Ellie. Also, I found a kind of dubstep version of it a while ago - I'm nowhere near cool enough to be in to dubstep but this is really brill. It sits cosily on my ipod surrounded by McFly and Ed Sheeran.


The two major crowd pleasers of the night were Anything Can Happen and Burn - the two big singles from Ellie's most recent album. I had total "OMFG I really really really love Ellie Goulding, she's the best thing ever and I want to be her best friend and always listen to her music!!!" moments. You get those too, right?

So yeah, it was awesome and here is some more proof of Ellie being super cool - proof.

If you're a Londoner you are lucky enough to live close to some of the UK's biggest and best music venues - the O2 Arena, Wembley Stadium and Arena, Hammersmith Apollo but the city is also home to brilliant smaller venues like Water Rats in King's Cross and 12 Bar Club in Soho. The first time I went to Water Rats was to see Toploader - I went because a friend of mine knows the bassist and we ended up drinking cider with them in their dressing room. If you'd told my 13-year old self that.....ha!

Because my life is so mega full of theatre I don't actually get to that many gigs - I personally find the O2 a bit too big and expensive, you can fork our £50 to sit about a mile from the stage. I need to go to more stuff and would love to check out some smaller venues - so let's flip this blog round - do any of you musical Londoners have any suggestions?

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