YOU MAY HAVE noticed that Murder On The Dancefloor has become hard to escape in recent weeks, with the Sophie Ellis-Bextor song chiming from every TikTok scroll and radio station. If you’ve seen Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, specifically that naked dance scene courtesy of Barry Keoghan, you’ll understand exactly why the song is going viral 23 years after it was first released.
Its success has put the 44-year-old singer – who helped her fans through the pandemic with her kitschy entertaining kitchen discos– back in the spotlight. Thanks to the Saltburn effect, a whole new generation, many of whom weren’t even born when the track was first released, are discovering the power of SEB – and it’s about time.
The best part is that as well as hitting the top five in this country, the song has become a hit Stateside, reaching the Billboard Top 100, meaning Ellis-Bextor is getting her big US break decades into her career.
‘I’m still getting my head around it,’ she tells Grazia. ‘It’s extraordinary. I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime unique kind of thing. The pressure is off; [the song] has been such a defining part of my career already that this new adventure is just a feeling of pure enjoyment and not really worrying too much about what it all means.
‘The first time I performed it live I dedicated it to a friend who had just broken up with a boy, to make her feel better, so maybe there’s something timeless about songs that just want to bring people joy.’
The music industry has evolved dramatically in the decades since Ellis-Bextor first came to fame in 1997 as the singer in indie band The Audience, then going on to feature on DJ Spiller’s number one hit Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)
