Veering away from her more “DIY aesthetic” that took hold of most music videos circa 2020, Ellie Goulding is back with a new single to support the release of her upcoming fifth album, Higher Than Heaven (not to be conflated with Florence + the Machine’s High As Hope). Fitting in with the afterlife motif of such a title, her song is called, “Let It Die.” A far cry from the Paul McCartney philosophy of “Live and Let Die.” For, in Goulding’s estimation, it isn’t about moving on, per se, and letting the other person “do them,” so much as it is about her realizing she has to kill off a relationship in order to survive. Ergo, the opening verse, “Toxicity slippin’ to my bloodstream/I give too much, you suck the life out of me.”
In many regards, it echoes the theme conveyed by a fellow Briton (Welsh, to be more precise) MARINA, on 2019’s “No More Suckers.” With a double meaning that refers to being a sucker for getting bamboozled by other people’s faux “love” and the “suckage” that occurs from proverbial leeches, MARINA declares, “I was too open, I was too quick/To let other people in, took whatever they could get/Now I see a pattern, I’m getting rid of it/Yeah, I know I need a change ’cause I’m tired of feeling drained.” She then chirps happily in the chorus, “No more suckers in my life/All the drama gets them high/I’m just trying to draw the line/No more suckers in my life/They just keep bleeding me dry/Till there’s nothing left inside.”
It’s evident that Goulding feels the same way about one person in particular (though hopefully not her own husband, Caspar Jopling) as she traipses into the White Cube Gallery—the view showing us a perspective of her marching feet as though she’s the one holding the camera from above (which, surely, she must be). But ultimately, it’s director Carlota Guerrero calling the filmic shots as we then see two rows of dancers lined up on each side of the hallway in poses of either mounter or mountee. Goulding, the lone wolf among the pack, seems to be the only one with the knowledge that coupledom is bullshit as she turns the camera back to her face in selfie mode to sing, “I fill my cup to drink you into someone else/And I blame myself.” As Sky Ferreira once did on a song called the same.
Guerrero then cuts to Goulding at the center of four other bikini-clad dancers (in bikini tops meant to look like tits on certain portions of it) in front of a painting that appears as though it’s dripping gold (Goulding, gold—not a coincidence). Talk of the suburbs (like Olivia Rodrigo did on “drivers license”) as metaphor then arrives in the lyrics, “And I had a dream that we were a beautiful endeavor/Sunset driving through the suburbs/But we go no further.” The inevitable dance breakdown occurs when the musical one does with Goulding asking in earnest, “When did you lose the light behind your eyes?/Tell me why when there’s no more tears to cry [something Ariana knows all about]/And you’re holdin’ on to love for life/I think it’s timе to let it die.”
It’s a powerful philosophy that many still have trouble adhering to in this world of the monogamy-capitalism industrial complex. For a large majority finds it far easier to stay with someone while feeling a lingering sense of perpetual dissatisfaction (a topic Adele addresses on most of 30) than actually risk leaving and seeing what fate awaits them “out there.”
A cut to Goulding back in clothes and in front of a new painting finds her surrounded by dancers laid out on the floor before each couple permutation engages in a choreographed tussle, some in “freeze frame” position. In the midst of it all, Goulding urges, “If you lose yourself, let it die.” A mantra that few people in relationships are willing to adhere to as a result of the continued societal shunning of those who would willfully engage in something like sologamy over being “only” “semi”-miserable in a couple.
In the next scenes, Kazaky-type dancers (in terms of men wearing tights with heels), proceed to go wild with their moves as Goulding remains the calm eye in the center of the storm. It’s almost like an allegory for the person who has become immune to their partner’s verbal abuse, tuning it out and floating up somewhere else until it’s over. She continues to stand among the fray of violently moving dancers as the video comes to a close, some aspects reminding one of Madonna doing the same amid a crowd of pawing “fans” in the “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” video (which Olivia Rodrigo vaguely recreated for portions of Sour Prom).
For those who are already “strong enough” to have admitted that it was better to be alone than unhappy (as Whitney noted on “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay”), perhaps it’s more useful to interpret “Let It Die” as an indirect anthem speaking from the point of view of Mother Earth herself with regard to her give-give-give dynamic with humans (as MARINA, once again, also did on “Purge the Poison”). Indeed, relationship status won’t much matter anyway when we’re all fighting for basic survival and things like “sexy time” feel more superfluous than usual.
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