
Two decades ago, Sophie Ellis-Bextor was everywhere with 'Murder On The Dancefloor'. Now she’s the cool mum who’s spent lockdown livestreaming Friday night “kitchen discos” from her cluttered home with her five “feral” sons joining in.
“The nice thing was they didn’t really have a clue [about] the significance of it, really,” Ellis-Bextor told the Pop Spot podcast. “Obviously my husband Richard and I knew that there were people watching while we did it, but for them, they just saw their mum singing to the back of their dad’s phone.”
Ellis-Bextor has been in the spotlight in the UK since she was a kid herself. Her mum, Janet Ellis, was a presenter on children’s show Blue Peter and, as a child, Ellis-Bextor would sometimes join her on set. By the time she was 16, she was in the indie band Theaudience. Her producer dad, Robin Bextor, who had made music videos for Adam Ant and Bucks Fizz, did the same for his daughter’s band.
After Theaudience broke up, Ellis-Bextor was asked to sing on a track by Italian DJ Spiller. She wrote some verses and the chorus came from another writer. Although she felt uncomfortable about singing the word “ain’t” (“because it was not part of my normal vernacular” she revealed to Double J), she did it anyway, and the dance hit of 2000, 'Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)', was born.