Ellie Goulding

LOS ANGELES >> Throughout her career, Ellie Goulding has been candid about the drawbacks of fame. Although she remembers being a self-conscious teenager, Goulding said her struggles with panic attacks, anxiety and insecurity about how she looks were exacerbated in the early stages of her stardom.

“I was kind of thrust into this world,” she recalled. “I didn’t really get a chance to sort of do that thing that everyone gets to do where they kind of come out of that teenage phase, like start to find yourself.”

But as Goulding gears up to release her fifth studio album, “Higher Than Heaven,” on Friday, the British pop star declared she is done caring about what other people think.

“I can’t allow those comments and those opinions to affect me. I can’t. Life is too short,” Goulding said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press.

“I think we all need to be way more selfish and stop doing things for other people.”

But even as she professes to put herself first more, Goulding does want to use her clout to speak up for those “who don’t have a voice,” including the people most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and the planet itself.

As she finalizes the details of her upcoming tour, the outspoken climate activist and U.N. Environment goodwill ambassador is putting her money where her mouth is by only agreeing to play venues that can meet her standards of environmentally sustainable practices.

“We’re trying to figure out a tour that’s very green and has the smallest possible carbon footprint,” she said. “I really care about that stuff and it just takes a little bit more time and energy and effort to figure it all out.”

Goulding is cognizant of the amount of pollution and waste that results from a typical tour, from the travel involved to the merchandise sold and large quantities of plastic used.

“There’s like so much plastic backstage,” she said.