(SPOILER ALERT) The movie Saltburn has many memorable moments, but one of the most memorable shows star Barry Keoghan dancing around completely naked to the 2002 British pop hit “Murder on the Dancefloor” by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. As the song has exploded on TikTok and entered the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time, Sophie tells Vulture, “It’s all pretty funny, isn’t it?”
Since starting her career in 2000, Sophie, a huge star in her native U.K., has also been successful in pretty much every English-speaking country but America. “If you could go back to 22-year-old me and tell her ‘The song’s going to break in the U.S., you just have to wait a couple of decades,"” she muses.
However, she notes that one of the things she loves about the music biz is that “at any point, you might get a phone call or an email and it just changes the course of what you’re up to.”
Sophie says Saltburn writer-director Emerald Fennell contacted her in early 2023 and told her she wanted to use the song for “someone to dance to with no clothes on.”
“That was literally all I knew,” she says. “I said yes, because that sounded like fun and I wanted to see it.”
When she finally attended a screening last summer, she took her mom and her 19-year-old son. If you’ve seen Saltburn, you know that might be a bit awkward.
“My mom and son were fine, but I think I was worrying about them and I had my head in my hands for some of it,” Sophie, who has four other sons, admits. “But I also really enjoyed it. I want to see it again!”
Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
