Her son was there too. She celebrates the film and the US success it brings to her 2001 hit.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 track “Murder On The Dancefloor” is currently enjoying a renaissance after becoming the essential part of the new satirical thriller “Saltburn” from Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”). 23 years after its first release, the piece is currently in eighth place in the UK charts and has also become a hit in the USA, where it was only slightly known at the time. In an interview, the singer spoke about the new revival of her single, the new success in the USA and the moment she saw “Saltburn” in the cinema with her mother and son.
“I’m there! That sounds funny”
Ellis-Bextor explains in an interview with “NME” how her song came to be included in “Saltburn”: “A while ago I was asked for permission to use ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ in a film,” she says. “I was given very little information, other than the basics like: Emerald Fennell is the writer and director – and I already knew her and thought she was great – the film would be called ‘Saltburn’ and the main character would be the whole song dance without wearing anything! That was all I knew and it was enough. I said, ‘I’m in! That sounds funny.'”
And so the singer finally saw the finished work in the cinema – together with her mother and son: “I went to a screening with my whole family – including my mother and my eldest son – and luckily we got it Everyone survived and loved the film.”
The 44-year-old further shares: “I had the feeling, which I find really delicious, that afterward you just want to think about the film and talk about it. It had a very special atmosphere and I wanted to get back to that state of mind as quickly as possible. The movie was funny and had so many great songs that it was special to be a small part of it.”
“Saltburn” has been available to watch on Amazon Prime Video since December 22nd.
You have to go “where the electricity comes from”
The fact that the track, which was featured on her debut album READ MY LIPS, is also successful in America after all this time is a real surprise for Sophie Ellis-Bextor, as she explains in an interview with “NME”: “That’s it, which is quite extraordinary. For her [die Menschen in den USA] it’s a new song and that’s crazy. […] The song didn’t do anything in America the first time around, and I have no problem with that. If I’ve learned anything along the way, it’s that you have to go where the electricity comes from.”
Pushing the song into a hit in the US in 2001 “would have meant spending a lot of time away, and I prefer to go where something is already going on,” said the singer. And so she ended up having “a blast in Latin America, Southeast Asia, all these places – but if this is something that gets me there, then let’s see what happens.”
Ellis-Bextor released her seventh album HANA in 2023. She is currently working on a new work.