Sophie Ellis-Bextor addresses crowd at Bataclan before ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ performance
All I want to say is that ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ is not a song with any evil in its heart.”
By Nick Reilly
Sophie Ellis-Bextor paid tribute to the victims of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks before performing ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ at Le Bataclan earlier this week.
The singer, who is the midst of a viral moment after the song featured in much-discussed movie Saltburn, played the track during a gig at the 1500 capacity venue on Tuesday night (March 5).
That same venue was the location of the November 2015 terror attack where 90 concertgoers were killed and hundreds more wounded during a show by Eagles Of Death Metal. Three attackers stormed the club and fired semi-automatic rifles into the crowd, one of several attacks in the French capital on that same night.
Before singing the song at the venue this week, Ellis-Bextor took a moment to acknowledge the unfortunate extra meaning of the track’s title and chorus.
“It didn’t feel right to me to just waltz into a song called ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ without noting and paying tribute to the history,” the singer said. “All I want to say is that ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ is not a song with any evil in its heart.”
She went on: “The whole intention of that song, like this venue, is to bring joy and music onto the dancefloor.
“So in tribute to that spirit, and in tribute to everybody who has ever danced right here at the Bataclan, this is ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’”.
Ellis-Bextor nabbed her first US Hot 100 hit with the song in January, and made her US television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in February, where she was backed by the show’s house band, the Roots. In January, the song was released on vinyl for the first time.
‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ originally appeared on the singer’s debut LP Read My Lips, but it has seen a resurgence over the past few months thanks to its placement in Emerald Fennell‘s movie Saltburn. The song soundtracks the final scene of the movie where the star, Barry Keoghan, dances nude — a visual that has inspired a trend on TikTok, helping propel the song onto Billboard’s charts and landed it at Number Two in the UK.