Chart-topping musician and all-round legend Sophie Ellis-Bextor has revealed the most bizarre moment so far from her global resurgence.
The Groovejet star, 44, has found a legion of new fans thanks to the inclusion of Murder On The Dancefloor in Emerald Fennell’s ‘extreme’ film Saltburn, which everyone has been talking about.
Her 2001 track features in one of the most shocking and memorable moments in the film, and has led to the 22-year-old song flying up the charts – reminiscent of the Summer Of Kate Bush after Running Up That Hill was used in Netflix’s Stranger Things.
Things have been non-stop for Sophie in the weeks since – but there’s one thing in particular she just cannot wrap her head around.
‘There has been a lot of crazy stuff,’ she told Metro.co.uk. ‘The way the world is, we get so much every day, every day there’s like a new development.’
‘But I did slightly freak out when Oprah Winfrey used Murder [in a new video]. I’m not going to lie. I was like, “Oh my God. Oprah Winfrey! Is using Murder on the Dancefloor!’
Sophie’s kids are also finding the newfound viral fame of the song ‘baffling’, particularly son Kit, 14, as his mum cropping up constantly on TikTok.
‘I think he finds it slightly baffling,’ she admitted. ‘Not like, horrified or anything, but he’s definitely a little bit perplexed – like, “why is mum doing things in what is normally just my world?'”
‘But I reassured him it’s going to pass – it’ll be a safe space again soon.’
The Saltburn scene that made Murder globally famous once again features Banshees of Inisherin actor Barry dancing naked after, no spoilers, but committing a fairly unspeakable act.
All Sophie knew about it before agreeing to let her track be used in the film was that it was directed by Emerald Fennell (‘so I knew it was in safe hands’), and that the entire song would be used in a scene with ‘someone dancing with none of their clothes.’
And she thinks it’s the absolute perfect fit for the scene, as it ‘brought out the darkness’ in the song.
‘The song is triumphant, but it’s got a little bit of wickedness. And that was the starting point for me … when I did the music video all those moons ago, I played a baddie. She’s trying to do anything she can to win a competition, killing people and hurting and poisoning them, and then I win.
‘Maybe over the years I’d kind of forgotten about its dark side, but [Saltburn] reminded me.’
She absolutely ‘loved’ Saltburn when she saw the finished product, calling it ‘very much my kind of film’ as she praised the scripts and the cast – but it’s up in the air as to when she’ll let her younger kids watch the movie, which has some very explicit scenes.
Sophie shares five children with husband Richard Jones: Sonny, 19, Kit, 14, Ray, 11, Jesse, seven, and four-year-old Mickey, and she says she’s happy to ‘be led by the kids’ when they’re ready to ‘cope’ with films of that nature.
My nearly 15-year-old has watched it … and he didn’t tell me until he watched it, and he seemed to have survived the experience just fine!’
Sophie describes it as ‘beautiful, magic, glorious, special, lovely,’ that Murder has found a whole new generation of fans through Saltburn, and when put to her that it’s a similar thing as to what happened to Running Up That Hill in summer 2022, calls it ‘incredible’ that she’s ‘even in the same sentence’ as Kate Bush.
‘A few stars have to align [for this to happen],’ she says, adding that in recent months she’s noticed more and more kids and younger people attending her gigs, ‘and not just to like, laugh at me!’
‘A few things just line up, with streaming and TikTok it’s like the record shop is open all the time and all the songs are in stock for everyone, everything is ripe for the picking. With Kate Bush’s song that year, I was right with it, like “this is just exactly what I feel like hearing right now. It feels exactly right.”
Now that Murder is back in the charts, Sophie says she’s able to just sit back and enjoy what’s happening – unlike the first time.
‘The stakes were so high, because I was just starting my solo career. With Murder, the first time was really significant because it meant, “Now I can maybe make my album, or get to tour or make another album” – this time it’s like having pudding, it’s just a really lovely, unexpected sweet treat.
‘So I’m just trying to enjoy it in the purity of what that is.’
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