Sophie Ellis-Bextor was born in April 1979 in Hounslow, London. In 1996 she joined indie band theaudience on lead vocals and had two UK Top 40 singles and a UK Top 40 album before they were dropped by their record label. In 2000, she collaborated with Italian DJ Spiller, adding vocals to Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love), which entered the UK charts at number one.
The following year, Sophie Ellis-Bextor launched her solo career with the UK number two album Read My Lips, which featured four hit singles including Murder on the Dancefloor, which became Europe’s most played song of 2002. The song was used in a notorious scene in the 2023 film Saltburn, giving it a second lease of life and becoming a global smash hit single.
A further six hit albums have followed, along with her podcast Spinning Plates, the memoir Music, Men, Motherhood and Me and high-profile appearances on Strictly Come Dancing, The Masked Singer and RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Speaking to the Big Issue for her Letter to my Younger Self, Sophie Ellis-Bextor looks back on her early days in music, the song that changed everything for her and motherhood
When I was 16 my main preoccupations were boys and music. Hands down. I think I had quite a big shift when I turned 16, because I’d been a late starter with discovering the world of boys. And then by 16, I was like, “Oh, hello!” I’m sure my parents were horrified. But I didn’t have time to think about them any more. I was listening to a lot of indie music in 1995, so it was all Britpop. I started going clubbing, and that’s also when I started singing. It was the time when all the lines started to join up. And I was like, I think I’ve found the thing I want to do.
I used to go clubbing on a Friday night to an indie club called Popscene, which was at a place called the LA2 in the centre of London. One week when I was there, a guy came up to me and said that he worked for Melody Maker and he had a friend who was looking for a singer for his band. He was just making small talk, really. But I was like, well, actually, me and my girlfriend have just recorded a demo of me singing some Oasis songs. So he gave me the details of where this friend would be the next night, and I went there, and I gave him this cassette of me singing. And later he phoned me back and said, “Do you want to join my band?” And that band ended up being called theaudience. So I had a record deal.
1989: Sophie Ellis-Bextor and her mum, former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis. Image: Clive Limpkin / Daily Mail / Shutterstock
I think when I was a teenager what I imagined was coming across as a sort of worldliness was probably coming across quite the opposite. I was sometimes talking about things I had no idea about. I had very strong opinions about ‘this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong, this is cool, this is not cool’, and it’s kind of a relief when all that goes away. It’s easy to cringe about little me and sometimes someone will say, “Oh, I met you when you were young.” And I’ll be like, “Oh god, was I horrible?” But I also know the important things that really resonated for me still mean the same to me now. In terms of my music or even some of my relationships, I met people in my late teens, early 20s, that I still work with now. And I think that’s a good thing.
My parents were really cool. I do really appreciate that they put me into a private secondary school, and that was a big stretch, and I knew it was a big thing that they were doing for me. So when I turned to them at the end and I was like, “I’m not going to university, I’m going on tour” – credit to them, they were like, “OK.” They could have easily been like, “That’s not quite where we saw this heading.” But I think my mum and dad [TV presenter Janet Ellis and producer/director Robin Bextor] could see that I was working hard. There was momentum. And you know, we’re not really a family to talk about long-term plans anyway. It’s more about the here and now. How are you doing right now? Are you happy? Is this working?
When I was in my late teens, I had my first serious relationship – it wasn’t a very healthy one, and I put a lot of myself into it. So I think first and foremost, my younger self would be a bit shocked to learn that this relationship I had prioritised and poured a lot into was not actually doing me any favours. Loads of people go through very similar experiences, and in a weird way those hard knocks are actually the things that really set you up quite well for the future.
The things that were super important to me in my late teens – my band and my boyfriend – I lost both of them early. My band had split up and I was dropped by the label by the time I was 20. It had gone very fast in one direction and then very fast in the other. I credit that as being one of the things that probably stopped me from being a completely horrible person. I think if I’d had success after success, I’d be gross today.
1998: Sophie Ellis-Bextor with her first band, theaudience. Image: Piers Allardyce / Shutterstock
It was awful when the band split up. I was very low. I felt like I’d had the best bit of my career behind me already. And it didn’t have a plan B. I felt like I’d screwed up quite a lot, really, because I’d found the thing I loved and it hadn’t worked. All my girlfriends were off at uni. I felt too old to be then going to university, two years behind them. So I just felt like, I don’t know what else to do with myself. I didn’t feel like I had any other employable qualities. All I really wanted to do is get back into singing. I think in a lot of ways, that was quite good for me. But it was quite a blow really. It felt quite humiliating.
Just when I was very down something happened to change everything. I’d signed a publishing deal when I got a record deal and when the band were dropped my publishers sent me an instrumental of Groovejet, which was commercial dance music. Well I’d come from the indie scene. I didn’t listen to any dance music. So when I first got sent it, I was actually a bit offended. It’s just not my bag. Don’t you know me at all?! But then there was something about the track that I really liked, and I thought maybe this is what I need – to go into a whole other world away from the world I’ve been in. Nobody in the indie world will even know I did it, and I can have a new adventure just to kind of shake things up. [Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) by Spiller and Sophie Ellis-Bextor got to number one in the UK and was a hit across the world in 2000].
I think because of what happened with my first band, I was quite grounded by the time I had success. I think if that had been the first thing I’d ever done, it would have been too much for me. But because I’d had a lot of hype with my first band, I think I could take it with a bit of a pinch of salt and kind of enjoy it a lot more. Because it didn’t feel as personal. It just felt kind of quite cartoony. And I also knew, even then, that this experience was once in a lifetime. So I was like, I’m just going to try and enjoy this. It was just silly fun.
I always wanted to be a mum. I’m the eldest in my family – I’ve got a brother and sister on my mum’s side, and then another two sisters and a brother my dad’s side. So there was always a baby in the house. I had my brother on my hip from when I was about eight. I really liked the idea of being a young mum. I didn’t know I was going to get pregnant when I did though. I hadn’t been dating Richard [husband, musician Richard Jones] very long when I found out I was pregnant. It wasn’t the easiest thing to be a new mum at 25 making pop music [the couple now have five sons].
If I could have one last conversation with anyone I would choose my stepdad. I miss my grandparents, but their deaths felt more like the natural order of things. But my stepdad was only 62 and it was only four years ago and we still miss him very much. He was a really, really lovely stepfather to me. My own parents separated when I was little, but because they both remarried I ended up having four parents. John was always just a very calm, funny presence in my life. Though I’d feel a bit guilty if I took the conversation with him, I feel like I should give it to my mum.
2023: Sophie Ellis-Bextor performing on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury with husband Richard Jones. Image: Anthony Harvey / Shutterstock
I love the beauty of those moments when everything’s kind of fallen into place. Last year my band and I played Glastonbury on the Pyramid Stage. The sun was shining, and my sister was there, and my eldest boy and my brother and my husband and my friends, and that was a great day. But it would almost be too much to have too many of those kind of days. It’s nice when they just pop up every now and then.
Sophie Ellis Bextor’s NYE Disco is on BBC One and iPlayer on 31 December from 11.30pm. Tune in to her New Year’s Eve Kitchen Disco from 12-2pm on the same day on Radio 2 and BBC Sounds.
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