A naked dance gave song new life

Sophie Ellis-Bextor's 2001 single hit the charts again after its use in Netflix thriller 'Saltburn'

- BEN RAYNER

If you're a Sophie Ellis-Bextor fan from Toronto, the truly mind-boggling thing about Sophie Ellis-Bextor is that she played her first ever performance in Toronto last Friday.

Forget Toronto, too. The brisk seven-date tour that began in San Francisco on May 30 and concluded in our fair city on the weekend marked the London-born-andbred dance-pop chanteuse's first ever incursion into North America as a whole.

This despite slingin' hits around the globe for 25 years: from her calling-card turn on Spiller's 2000 dance-floor smash "Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)," the epic Freemasons collab "Heartbreak (Make Me a Dancer)" and her disco-tastic COVID-era cover of Alcazar's "Crying at the Discotheque" to genuine overseas chart-bombers like "Take Me Home," "I Won't Change You" and a wee ditty called "Murder on the Dancefloor."

"I literally did my first ever, actual, official day's work in America when I came over to do the Jimmy Fallon show in February. That was the first thing I've ever done here," said the affable Ellis-Bextor in an interview. "This is all a first. But I love it. I love how bonkers it is."

What's "bonkers" about Ellis-Bextor's sudden notoriety beyond the faithful Cult of Sophie is that it can be traced directly to the utterly perfect pop single that should have made her notorious here when it was first released in December 2001: "Murder on the Dancefloor."