Sophie Ellis-Bextor enjoys Murder on the Dance Floor just as much as the rest of us.
The 44-year-old pop legend first appeared on the scene more than 20 years ago with earworms like Groovejet, Take Me Home, and, of course, Murder on the Dance Floor.
Years later, you can still hear Murder at Karaoke nights, bars, and clubs, and Sophie herself lights up crowds with the renowned music at festivals and headline events – and she loves every minute of it.
The singer chatted ahead of her Pyramid stage debut at Glastonbury 2023, where she revealed her intentions for the set and the day as a whole, as well as reminisced on her career thus far.
Some singers, like Donny Osmond, come to loathe their most successful songs (he told Metro.co.uk he used to hate Puppy Love until enjoying it again years later), but Sophie from Lost In The Sunshine is not one of them.
‘I still love [Murder on the Dance Floor],’ she confirms.
‘I’m still good friends with all my old songs. I’m lucky, I think. I hear stories about people who don’t feel the same way but I’m still happy to sing those songs and I feel proud they’re things people associate with me.’
She’s baffled by musicians who feel otherwise, adding: ‘Luckily I don’t really relate when people find it tricky with their old stuff. Why would you not want that? Surely that’s a bit of a gift if you’re a singer?’
Sophie began her musical career with the band Theaudience in 1996, before going solo in 2000 – a lifetime ago, but does it seem that long? So, ‘yes and no.’
‘In some ways the years pile up and you think, “how did that happen?” but then there are so many twists and turns and now it’s more like fun.
‘I like that I’ve got to this point and I have history under my belt and a lot of long-term relationships with the people I’ve worked with, that feels good.’
Earlier this year, the singer released a music video for her new single Lost In The Sunshine, for which she collaborated with filmmaker Sophie Muller, with whom she had previously worked 20 years earlier.
And in the video, she donned an outfit that super Sophie fans will recognise because she wore it in her first-ever music video for Take Me Home, which was also directed by Muller.
‘I keep everything. I’ve got stuff from Theaudience as well. I keep lots and lots of stuff,’ she laughs.
When preparing to film the new music video, ‘I packed a massive suitcase and put about 40 different things in and when I got to Rome [Muller] just laughed at me about how many things I’d kept hold of. When you start out there’s a myth you’ve got to wear new stuff all the time and it’s just not true.
‘I quite enjoy the fact you can reference back to other parts of what you’ve been up to. It’s a nice way to have a bit of fun and give a nod to stuff you’ve done before. I thought it was kind of perfect really. To give a nod to the first thing things you’ve done.’
Sophie’s newest album, Hana, is performing incredibly well, with Sophie meeting fans who have the logo tattooed on them and the new tracks being well-received live, which the mum-of-five finds ‘really special.’
‘It’s not lost on me that I’m really lucky to still be doing what I do. This album is quite personal, so to see it be received the way it has, has been really special. It really is a lovely thing. It’s kind of surprised me as well.’
Hana is inspired on a trip to Japan Sophie, her son Sonny, and her mother Janet had in 2020, just before the world went into lockdown.
Her stepfather John was intended to go on the trip, but he was suffering from lung cancer at the time and was too sick to fly, and Sophie admitted that they realised at the time that he would probably never go on another trip again.
He died in July 2020, hurting his family, notably Sophie, with whom he had maintained a deep relationship since she was a youngster.
One particular song on Hana means a lot to the star: Until The Wheels Fall Off, which she reveals ‘is directly inspired by a letter that we found on the day that he died.’
The letter gave instructions as to what John wanted for his funeral, as well as reflections on how ‘he enjoyed his life so much,’ and how he and Sophie’s mum ‘were so good at getting the most out of what was in front of them.’
‘That was something I really wanted to encapsulate [in the song]. A lot of those lines were taken directly out of the letter,’ she adds.
While the family was going through painful sorrow, Sophie was entertaining hundreds of people every Friday night throughout lockdown via her Kitchen Disco, which couldn’t have been easy while in mourning.
‘The backdrop of Kitchen Disco was already a lot of heaviness in the news, a lot of people talking about losing people, a lot of people in hospital,’ Sophie adds. It appeared to be a group reaction.
‘A lot of the people who would come round to our disco were going through things themselves, and needed a bit of a release from how heavy everything was. It wasn’t like it was a solitary thing, it was a way of escaping for a little moment on a Friday night.’
Hana is out now; tour dates are available from Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s website.
Source My Celebrity Life.
