Love Me Like You Do by Ellie Goulding - Songfacts

Love Me Like You Do

Album: 50 Shades Of Grey (2015)
Charted: 1 3
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Songfacts®:

  • Ellie Goulding recorded this sultry power ballad for the 50 Shades Of Grey movie. It finds the British songstress channeling literature student Ana Steele's desire for the wealthy entrepreneur Christian Grey.

    You're the light, you're the night
    You're the color of my blood
    You're the cure, you're the pain
    You're the only thing I wanna touch
    Never knew that it could mean so much, so much.


    The anthemic song was penned by Swedish singer Tove Lo and songwriters Savan Kotecha and Ilya Salmanzadeh. It was produced by Ali Payami and Taylor Swift producer Max Martin.
  • There's more going on in the simple title than meets the eye. Not only does "Love Me Like You Do" pique our interest (how does he love?), but it also can be interpreted as physical or emotional love, as both aspects are intertwined in the lyrics and in the 50 Shades of Grey story.
  • The song's music video mixes footage from the Fifty Shades Of Grey movie with shots of Goulding ballroom dancing, a re-creation of Anastasia Steele's first dance with Christian Grey. The English singer told Dave Berry and Lisa Snowdon on the Capital Breakfast show: "I basically have become fascinated with ballroom dancing so I was like, 'Can I please do some dancing in it?"

    Goulding added: "There's no handcuffs. There's none of that stuff. There's some sensual bits in it I suppose. Not very actually! There's a nice man it, he's not famous but something tells me he might get a few more admirers after this video. He's kind of in the shadows so you can't really see him that much, which is a shame because he's a lovely guy."
  • The song debuted at #1 on the UK singles chart with first week sales of 172,000 copies. It was the fastest selling single by a female artist in the UK since Cheryl Cole's "Fight For This Love" sold 293,000 during its debut week in October 2009.
  • The intro clocks in at 20 seconds, giving Goulding plenty of time to set the dreamy, synthy tone before she launches into the song upon a drum swell. The chorus doesn't show up until the one-minute mark, giving it plenty of room to breathe. This stands in contrast to most pop songs of the time, but there was another huge hit with a delayed chorus: "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran.
  • Instead of using a bridge to ease up after a powerful chorus, this uses a brief instrumental/vocal break similar to the intro to evoke the calm before the storm of a final chorus.
  • Ellie Goulding's other contributions to movie soundtracks include "Bittersweet" for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 , "Mirrors" for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and "Beating Heart" for Divergent.
  • The full title appears 20 times throughout the chorus sections, which take up 41% of the song.
  • This song was the first time that Ellie Goulding worked with Max Martin. She subsequently teamed up with the Swedish hitmaker for several Delirium tracks. Goulding explained to Billboard magazine how he unlocked her voice. "He directed me on a couple of songs and he'd be like, 'Can you do this? And I'd be like, 'Do you mean this?'" she said. "and he'd be like, "Where did that come from? Never heard that before. Never heard you sing low on any of your records before." And yeah, it was great. It just came out of nowhere. He was good at bringing that confidence out of me."
  • Goulding sang this with Andra Day at the Grammy Awards in 2016.

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