Interview - Ellie Goulding: A weight of expectation on young shoulders

Less than a year ago, she was unknown outside the music taste-making fraternity but now, after winning a Brit award and topping an industry poll to find the coming year's likely stars, she's on her way to becoming a household name.

And all before her album was even released.

That means Goulding is caught in the odd position of having a world of expectation weighing down on her petite 23-year-old shoulders when lots of people haven't even heard a song by her.

"It's funny", she says, sipping a giant, gaudy orange-coloured fruit smoothie, "people want to knock me just because I've been hyped up.

"There was a journalist that came to a show recently and he wrote something about how my success was so pre-ordained he wanted to not like me and he wanted to be sceptical, but he couldn't because I was good. So that was very nice.

"I came top of the BBC Sound of 2010 poll, and when you get something as prestigious as that, people want to knock you. It was mainly people saying, 'I haven't heard Ellie yet, but she's annoying'."

It was a baptism of fire and the pressure of having to succeed before her album was even out, took its toll.

"I think I was having a bit of a breakdown. Not a mental breakdown, really, I just started getting anxious and panicky," she says, and later confesses to going to hospital, thinking she was about to have a heart attack, brought on by meeting Florence Welch, of Florence and The Machine, and worrying whether she would be as successful as the previous year's recipient of the Brit Critics' Choice Award.

"We cancelled some things so I could have two weeks off at Christmas, and the break did me the world of good and I came back ready. My body has accepted how busy I am, I think."

Today, at least, she seems remarkably at ease with the attention she's getting, although she admits she only saw herself on TV for the first time last week, and only "once or twice" has she caught one of her songs on the radio.

Despite gradually getting used to being in the spotlight, she remains a terrible worrier, a trait much in evidence in her lyrics.

"There's a lot of me on the album," she says, referring to her debut album, Lights.

"I'm quite questioning. I go through periods when I'm really unhappy. I think a lot, so, inevitably, I end up being quite sad, whether it's things that are happening in the world, or in your own life and relationships.

"I think so deeply about things that I end up really worried, so that's basically why I'm a hypochondriac.

At least it makes me write constantly about how I feel."

Among the bleak tales of her own love gone bad, there's a song on Lights about Ellie's father, called Your Biggest Mistake.

"I don't really speak to him, and I think I got everything into that song that I could," she says, closing the subject.

There is one song on the album, last track Salt Skin, in which Ellie finally gets her man.

"It's quite uplifting," she says, beaming. "It's about wanting to run to someone, and this time the guy wants the same thing, and wanted me, which is quite rare. Some people think the salt skin in the title is from tears, but it's actually about sweating.

"If you go to the gym or out for a run, you get salty skin from sweating. So Salt Skin is just a sign that I've been running, which is my favourite thing to do, and in this case, running toward someone special."

Now the time has come for Ellie's album to be released or "wrestled out of my hand", she feels she can fully prepare for her tour, and wants to concentrate on incorporating "strings, other singers and a female choir" into proceedings. "I have all these big ideas about my live show, because I want it to grow and I want people to come and see me and think it's been worth the money," she says.

"I'm proud of my album," she concludes. "Really proud, in fact. They're songs that I've written since I was 18. The album is how I want to sound, and I think there's a wide audience of people that can and will enjoy my music."