Sophie Ellis-Bextor wants to “celebrate her age” with her upcoming album.
The 46-year-old singer was lead vocalist of the indie rock band Theaudience in the late 1990s before breaking out as a solo artist in the years that followed and as she gears up for the September release of her eighth album Perimenopop, she insisted that pop is her favourite genre of music.
Speaking live on stage during a show at the Royal Albert Hall, she said: “I’ve been singing for 30 years now and throughout my career I’ve been lucky enough to happily play with many music genres, but my heart beats the fastest for pop.
“This album is a celebration of that relationship.
“In fact, it’s a celebration of lots of things, including being the age I’m at and still having so many adventures and so much fun.”
Sophie enjoyed major success in the pop market during the early 2000s with hits such as Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) and Get Over You but then had a a massive career resurgence when her 2001 track ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ was famously used in the final scene of the 2023 film Saltburn.
In the scene, actor Barry Keoghan danced around completely naked and she recently admitted that she has just tried to make the most of the opportunities the viral moment has brought her.
She told BBC Breakfast at the end of 2024: “There were some things I knew I was doing this year and there were so many things that I wasn’t expecting.
“I think there’s a lot to reflect on. I’ve never done so many shows in my life. I’ve done about 110 gigs this year.
“That’s not just me, that’s all my band and crew as well. Amazing.
“There’s been some real highlights. It’s an extraordinary thing to get to my stage in my career and to still be doing things, new excitement. So I’ve just wanted to really grab hold of that. And this is very much part of that as well.”