Pop star Ellie Goulding's latest single Like a Saviour features a lot of biblical imagery. Here writer Kate Orson asks if she's converted to Christianity.
Ellie Goulding’s latest song Like a Saviour sounds like it could be a testimony of finding Jesus. She was lost in the dark with a metal heart, struggling with self-esteem, and with her "shadow" when her saviour leads her out of the darkness and into a new life. He shows her visions and she feels amazing. Her focus is no longer on herself, but her rescuer.
Of course, this is pop music. It’s not Jesus she’s singing about but romantic love. "Why are all the pop songs about love?" I remember a friend asking me when we were young tweens listening to all the latest pop music. I had no idea, it’s just the way things were and still are. Ever since we listened to fairy stories about princesses finding their princes, it’s been all about love.
The video for Ellie's song struck me as having a biblical theme. She and her dancers are stuck in the desert, lying in the sand. They are struggling to get anywhere, like the Israelites on a long journey out of Egypt needing a saviour to lead the way.
Even non-Christians are drawn to using biblical themes in their creative works.
It made me wonder; does Ellie know the Gospel? She doesn’t seem to be a believer, but has said of her marriage to Caspar Jopling: "I was never brought up with any particular religion, whereas my husband was, so I did get christened so I could get married." Caspar, is a former art dealer for Sotheby's and is currently studying for an MBA at Oxford University. The pair married in 2019 at York Minster cathedral, and while there’s little indication that her christening was anything more than a necessary step for marriage, could there be seeds of the Gospel influencing her songwriting?
It’s fascinating to me that even non-Christians are drawn to using biblical themes in their creative works. Is it the Holy Spirit stirring in some creators, or some subliminal awareness that that God of the Bible is true? As Paul said in Romans 1:20: "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."
Romantic love may be amazing and blissful and part of God’s design, but it’s not going to lead you out of Egypt. Only God can do that.
Creation is enough evidence of a creator, and so it seems that an awareness of the Gospel is a thread running through Ellie's songwriting. There also seems to be some awareness that this human "saviour" may not be all he appears to be. She said of her album Higher Than Heaven, which the song is taken from: "There was definitely a darkness about [the past two years] that was palpable in the studio, with everyone having gone through it differently. I think for that reason, nobody wanted to sit and agonise over some relationship or some drama. So that’s how this album came together. [Higher Than Heaven is] about being passionately in love. But it’s a hyper form of love, almost like a drug induced feeling. It feels almost artificial and there’s the potential for a crash."
What’s interesting is that at the end of the video Ellie and her dancers are still lying stranded in the desert. Romantic love may be amazing and blissful and part of God’s design, but it’s not going to lead you out of Egypt. Only God can do that. Let’s pray for Ellie and those in the music industry that one day they might be singing about the one and only true saviour.
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