Nearly 25 years after declaring she’d “burn this goddamn house right down,” Sophie Ellis-Bextor is still one of the queens of disco-pop. Only now, she’s swapped the nightclubs of her twenties for a new era with Perimenopop, an album that celebrates being in her forties with the same kind of energy.
The English artist, best known for her 2001 hit “Murder on the Dancefloor”, is reclaiming middle age, playfully and proudly. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone AU/NZ, she revealed the title of her new album began as a joke, but quickly stuck because of how perfectly it encapsulates where she’s at in her career and life.
“My original title for the album was a lot less extroverted. It was going to be called The Invisible Line, something a bit more poetic talking about different chapters, crossing over into new parts of your life, the realisation that certain chapters are over, but then I thought, I’m going to always be explaining that to people, it’s not something where you just get it,” she said.
“And Perimenopop was a jokey title that a girlfriend, Hannah, who’s a songwriter, and I had in the studio. But it didn’t really leave my head. While for me it’s not necessarily a literal reference to perimenopause, the title works well for a pop album. It was more about the conversation, the algorithm, the expectation of this age and how maybe sometimes it’s gloomy and overwhelming.”
Perimenopop made the most sense to Ellis-Bextor, who added that it has given her “complete permission” to be exactly who she is right now. That means no pretending she’s still a flirty twenty-something on the prowl, like pop music can stereotypically encourage of older women.
“In pop music, previously, it’s been celebrated if a woman doesn’t look like she’s got any older, or it doesn’t talk about her age, or it’s not invited into the songwriting… And I was like ‘that is literally not my life, and I don’t want it to be my life.’ I’m absolutely fine with being a 20-year married mother of five, like it’s cool, I’m genuinely okay with being in my 40s, so sod it, let’s have that conversation,” she told us.
Released via Decca, the album features previous singles “Freedom of the Night”, “Relentless Love”, and “Vertigo”, as well as the new single “Taste”, which sees Ellis-Bextor confidently return to her iconic disco-pop sound. She collaborated with MNEK and Jon Shave (Charli XCX, Sugababes) on the new single, which is an immediate and fun pop song that builds to a joyous chorus.
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Musically, the record is a joyful return to the dancefloor. Long before her 2001 hit re-emerged in recent years, Ellis-Bextor knew she wanted to make a disco-pop record. What followed was a collection filled with shimmering synths, cheeky storytelling, and an overarching sense of freedom.
“Writing is like getting a massive dressing up box, pulling things out, being allowed to play and be silly,” she said. “It’s like accessing a muscle that feels quite a privilege really. Plus, for me, there’s such a magic in starting the day with nothing and finishing it with a new song. I’ve never got over the novelty of that.”
For Ellis-Bextor, disco-pop isn’t just escapism — it’s wisdom, something she hopes to now share.
“I have lots of women that did that for me, so I’m walking a path that was already a bit trampled and I hope I’ve cut off a tiny bit more. I actually think some of my favourite disco songs were older women giving these cautionary tales, think about [Candi Staton’s 1976 single] ‘Young Hearts Run Free’, that wasn’t someone in their teens talking about first love. It was someone saying ‘I’ve lived through it, learn from me,'” she explained.
You’d forgive Ellis-Bextor for feeling like she’s living two lives right now: on the one hand, she’s the proud creator of Perimenopop, and on the other, she’s watching “Murder on the Dancefloor” enjoy an unlikely second youth, thanks to a starring role in the 2023 film Saltburn and, more recently, a dreamy and viral Royel Otis cover.
It’s “cherries on top of cherries on top of cake,” as she puts it, and proves what she’s always known: pop music thrives on momentum. The song’s resurgence feels less like nostalgia and more like evolution to her.
“What I love about music, and I really do feel this, everybody who interacts with my music owns a piece of it… That has nothing to do with me, that’s your relationship with the song. So for all the people that have engaged with it doing a cover, and particularly the Royel Otis one, they’ve made it their own,” she reflected.
One of her favourite moments came at Reading Festival last month, when she joined the Australian duo on stage to perform the hit song. Laughing, she said they “bashed it out in the dressing room once” and it was good enough, despite Royel Otis admitting to getting some of the lyrics wrong.
Grinning at the memory, she added: “I did get a bit of a kick out of bringing my disco sequined dress to that festival.”
As surreal as her resurgence has been, Ellis-Bextor saw it as the perfect bridge into her new album: “What happened just filled the sails of the little ship that was already going to be Perimenopop.”
Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Perimenopop is out now.
