Ellie Goulding‘s concert special Monumental: Ellie Goulding at Kew Gardens premieres on Amazon Freevee on Friday. It features her performing songs from her new album, Higher Than Heaven, for the first time at London’s Kew Gardens, a botanical garden with one of the most diverse plant collections in the world. Ellie says it was great, except for the fact that she was freezing cold.
“The whole experience that was simultaneously beautiful and uncomfortable because I was so cold the entire time, I could not warm up,” she tells ABC Audio. “I was wearing a dress that was, like, a wet effect, but it may as well have been just like freezing cold wet … because I literally was shivering. It’s hard to sing when you’re shivering.”
And that cold lasted quite a while, according to Ellie.
“I remember heading home to make my son’s bedtime. And I was like, in the car [shivering], I literally couldn’t warm up the whole way back,” she recalls. “I had the heated seat on, got the heating turned up — but now [when] I think back, I’ll only ever have, like, fond memories of that. Because it’s in one of the most nature-friendly, nature-worshipping places in the country.”
And as an environmental activist, Ellie says she loved being surrounded by “such a wide variety [and] diversity of plants.” She notes, “I just found it all really, just, moving … y’know, performing to plants is kind of like my dream.”
“It’s proven that … it’s better for you to be around nature and be around plants,” Ellie points out. “You can smell it, you can breathe it, you can feel the air is different. And so, apart from the cold, it was lovely.”
Higher Than Heaven arrives April 7.
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