Sophie Ellis-Bextor‘s single “Murder on the Dance Floor” was a smash in the U.K. and Europe when it first came out in 2001, but it’s now on the American charts thanks to its inclusion in the movie Saltburn. But while there is murder in the movie, Sophie says the song’s title is “definitely not literal.”
“I mean, I don’t really go clubbing as much these days,” Sophie, who’s got five kids, tells ABC Audio. “But I do still love dancing so much. And it was just that feeling of like, you know when you’re on a night out and you get, like, almost that burst of euphoria? Like, ‘This is life! This is why I left the house tonight!"”
“This is what it’s like, that sort of peak moment,” she adds. “That’s what I always thought that ‘Murder’ was about. That’s what I tried to write about: When you feel so good in your skin and you’re right where you’re meant to be, there’s nowhere else you want to be.”
“It’s, like, all about that moment. So that’s what I thought of when I was singing it, recording it, writing it.”
And while she’s scored many more hits in her native U.K., Sophie says she’s glad that it’s “Murder” that gave her her breakthrough in the U.S.
“There’s a nice, full-circle moment because it was my first proper solo song, so it formed the keystone of what my music would sound like forevermore,” she explains. “That song was really defining … [it] was there at the beginning.”
“So to have this sort of full circle for where I’m at now feels really neat, in my head,” she adds. “It kind of all makes sense.”
Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
