Goulding said of the single, "...That age was such a pivotal year for me in many ways and this song is so close to my heart. It takes me back to the reckless days of being a teenager and I hope it reminds us all about the innocence of youth." Goulding released "Hate Me" with American rapper Juice Wrld on 26 June 2019. It was premiered by Zane Lowe as his 'World Record' on Beats 1. In July, Goulding stated that her next material to be released would be the songs "Woman I Am" and "Start". In November, she released her rendition of Joni Mitchell's Christmas song "River", which topped the UK Singles Chart, becoming her third UK number one single and the last UK number one song of the 2010s. On 13 March 2020, Goulding released the new single "Worry About Me" which was created in-collaboration with Blackbear. In a radio interview with Heart the same month, she revealed that the album "kind of comes in two parts," adding that "the first side is something written entirely by me which was fun and I wrote most of it in New York when I was living there a few years back. I play the guitar and I play the bass and piano and then I'm singing a lot of vocals. It's very classically influenced because I love classical music. There's a lot going on, it's a big soundscape and one big film. The second half is my kind of alter ego songs." Goulding's music has been described as electropop, synth-pop, indie pop and folktronica. She is a soprano and is noted for her high piercing vibrato, breathy tone and emotive delivery. In a review for "Halcyon", Neil McCormick of "The Daily Telegraph" described her voice as "something special", continuing; "Her tremulous vibrato and slightly hoarse timbre have the feel of something primal and folky, her birdlike high notes conveying a childlike wonder while darker tones imply ancient depths of sorrow. She sings like she is strung out on the melody, warbling from a place of desperate emotion. It really is that rarest and perhaps most accidental of gifts: an original voice". He then continued in regards to her vocal layering stating, "producer Jim Eliot puts her voice front, back and centre, banking up choral walls of vibrato, fashioning hooks from cut up samples of chirrups and chants, and creating unusual textures from trills and warbles".