Ellie Goulding has said that she will have to rebuild her confidence before singing live again, because she has become more introverted during lockdown.

The pop superstar, 33, is releasing her fourth studio album, titled Brightest Blue, in July and plans to tour the UK in spring 2021.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast via video link, Goulding said she had watched back her performance at Glastonbury aired by the BBC this weekend and had been taken aback by the size of the crowd.

Brit Awards 2020 – Arrivals – London
Ellie Goulding at the Brit Awards 2020 (Ian West/PA)

She said: “I can’t even imagine now performing on stage. I watched my Glastonbury performance and I can’t believe I did that in front of all those people.

“I think I am going to have to build up all that courage. When I am on stage I definitely feel like I go into that other character, where I have this confidence out of nowhere.

“But as soon as I go off stage… I have never gone to any of my own after-show parties, genuinely, in the whole time I have toured because I am just a bit too shy.

“There is always a misconception that if you are a performer and you can perform to all those people, that you must be a very confident extrovert person.

“But actually I am the complete opposite. I think also this time has made me even more so.

Ellie Goulding wedding
Ellie Goulding and Caspar Jopling at their wedding in 2019 (Danny Lawson/PA)

“I have spent a lot of time by myself and I think I am going to have to build that back up again, whenever I do go back on tour.

“I am going back on tour next year, not this year, so hopefully everything will be a bit better then. It’s going to be quite surreal.”

Goulding also said she had been teaching herself to play piano during lockdown, in an attempt to add another dimension to her songwriting.

She said: “I am a guitarist by trade but I have been desperately trying to teach myself piano. I hear my music in a different way when I play it on the piano.

“So maybe by next year I will be vaguely accomplished.”

She is spending lockdown with her husband Caspar Jopling, an art dealer, after the pair married at York Minster in August last year.

Brightest Blue is available for pre-order ahead of its release on July 17.