Few pop culture resurgences have been as unlikely — or as fun — as Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor”.
First released in 2001, the disco-pop classic blew up again thanks to its placement in Saltburn, then found fresh life earlier this year when Sydney duo Royel Otis dropped their hazy, indie-disco cover.
The cover didn’t just go viral: it landed Ellis-Bextor back on stage with the Australians at Reading Festival last month. In one of the weekend’s most talked-about moments, she appeared in a shimmering sequined dress to sing her signature hit alongside the pair.
“[We] bashed it out in the dressing room once and that was good enough,” Ellis-Bextor laughed, recalling the festival cameo in a chat with Rolling Stone AU/NZ. “I did get a bit of a kick out of bringing my disco sequined dress to that festival.”
For Royel Otis, whose dreamy version has clocked millions of streams, having the original artist step up with them at one of the UK’s biggest festivals must have been a surreal full-circle moment. For Ellis-Bextor, the collaboration highlighted one of her beliefs about music. “Everybody who interacts with my music owns a piece of it… That has nothing to do with me, that’s your relationship with the song. So for all the people that have engaged with it doing a cover, and particularly the Royel Otis one, they’ve made it their own.”
The Reading cameo is just the latest of what Ellis-Bextor calls “cherries on top of cherries on top of cake.” It’s a reminder that pop music thrives on momentum, and she’s seizing it with Perimenopop, her new album out now via Decca.
The record is a sparkling, self-assured celebration of life in her forties, with singles “Freedom of the Night”, “Relentless Love”, and the MNEK-assisted “Taste” bringing her signature disco-pop into a new era. “I’m absolutely fine with being a 20-year married mother of five,” she said. “I’m genuinely okay with being in my 40s, so sod it, let’s have that conversation.”
Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Perimenopop is out now.
