Add Ellie Goulding to the list of celebrities who are on Britney Spears‘ side. After watching the Framing Britney Spears documentary, Ellie says, she couldn’t help thinking about the pressures she’s had to face in her own career.
“It really affected me,” she tells the Daily Mail‘s You magazine about the documentary. “Britney was so young, and she was thrown into this circus without any support.”
Ellie continues, “The same people who want your music and want more from you are also telling you that they want less: ‘I don’t want you to have mental health issues. I want you to be fine and perform and write perfect songs for me.'”
She recalls, “When I started out, there wasn’t much help and mental health wasn’t talked about,” while noting, “There’s more awareness now, but we’ve let a lot of people down, people who have brought us so much joy through their music.”
Ellie says, like Britney, she was sometimes forced to do things she wasn’t comfortable with. “I thought I had to look a certain way and dress a certain way,” she explains. “I thought I had to squish myself into some kind of box as a pop singer.”
She reveals, “I was repeatedly encouraged to wear the girliest, sexiest, most feminine option at any photo shoot. I was made to feel as though I wasn’t enough by myself. I began to think it was way more interesting for me to have a storyline with a man at the forefront, which triggered a wild insecurity of who I actually was without them.”
She notes, “If I just had a bit of what I have now, which is trusting and respecting myself, it would have been a different story.”
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.