Lights by Ellie Goulding

Lights, Ellie Goulding's debut album, came out on Polydor on 26 February 2010, a year after "Under the Sheets" first slipped out on the indie Neon Gold. Most of it was made in producer Starsmith's home studio in Bromley, with Frankmusik, Fraser T. Smith and Fred Falke also at the controls, and many of the songs date back to her earlier writing.

The trick here is the collision: a hushed, folk-bred voice and an acoustic guitar dropped into shiny electro-pop and club rhythms, singing about love that won't sit still. Not every critic bought the gloss, and reviews split between her voice and the production. Buyers had no such doubts. It went straight to the top in the UK and went double platinum there, and after a 2010 reissue as Bright Lights, with singles like "Starry Eyed" and the title track, it caught on in America as well, passing 1.6 million copies worldwide by 2012.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.