Sophie Ellis‑Bextor Says She’s Finally Stopped Worrying About Her Career After 40 Years in Music

Sophie Ellis‑Bextor may be one of the most recognisable voices in disco‑pop, but she says it’s only in the past five years that she has finally stopped worrying about her career.

“For so long, every album felt like another metre on the plank,” she told Zan Rowe on Take 5. “It’s only recently that I’ve felt I can relax and just keep doing what I love.”
She admits it “sounds a bit ridiculous,” given her four‑decade career and eight studio albums.

Beyond her music, Ellis‑Bextor has become a familiar figure in the UK’s entertainment world. She hosts a BBC radio show and has written both a cookbook and a memoir, Spinning Plates, named after her long‑running podcast where she interviews working mothers about balancing life and ambition. These projects, she says, have helped steady her long‑held insecurities.

But the biggest shift came from the unexpected revival of her 2001 disco‑pop classic Murder on the Dancefloor. The song exploded back into global charts after its unforgettable use in the climactic scene of Emerald Fennell’s 2023 film Saltburn, matching its original UK peak of #2 and becoming a hit again in Australia and the US. It also went viral after indie‑pop duo Royel Otis covered it for triple j’s Like A Version.

Ellis‑Bextor says the song’s second life was “super exciting,” but it also stirred up fresh anxiety a reminder that even after decades of success, the spotlight can still feel unpredictable.