Sophie Ellis-Bextor has vowed to teach the music industry a salient lesson with her new album Perimenopop.
The singer's eighth studio LP is set for release on September 12 via Decca, and Ellis-Bextor believes the disco-inflected record proves that age is no barrier to great pop music.
What's more, the 46-year-old told Music Week that she wanted to ensure there was no ambiguity about her intent.
“I didn’t want to be like, ‘Oh, well, you can do it at whatever age you are at and that’s OK as long as no one really talks about it, as long as you still look really young,’” she said. “I want to put it front and centre that I am in my mid-40s and, actually, I am very comfortable with it. I like getting older and I want to bring people along for the ride.
“I wanted something in the title that would really reference the age I’m at, the chapter I’m in, because I think it’s deeply relevant. It’s part of the story of my relationship with music."
Ellis-Bextor's biggest-selling album is her double platinum 2001 solo debut Read My Lips, which has sales of 854,471 according to Official Charts Company data.
It has been quite fun to come back to it and realise that nobody really cares what age you are and that you can work with pop or dance at whatever age you’re at
Sophie Ellis-Bextor
"I made pop albums in my 20s and by the time I was getting to the end of my 20s I felt there was an element of borrowed time," she said. "It wasn’t coming from me, but it was in the way it was being handled, in some of the comments I was getting… It has been quite fun to come back to it and realise that nobody really cares what age you are and that you can work with pop or dance at whatever age you’re at."
Speaking in our September edition, she continued: “I’ve felt, and I know my peers have felt, that you get to a point where all the algorithms start shifting towards perimenopause and it can feel a bit gloomy, looking at these ideas of what lies ahead,” she says. “Music has always been such a happy thing for me and I wanted the album to have something a little deeper about what being at this point in my life can mean, hence the pop.”
Ellis-Bextor signed to Decca last year, releasing Perimenopop's lead single Freedom Of The Night last October. Over the course of her career, she has achieved five Top 10 albums and eight Top 10 singles.
“Sophie has always had such an iconic sound, when you hear any of her songs you know it’s her immediately," said Decca co-president Laura Monks. "How many other British female artists have had pop hits across the same period of time as Sophie and would still be relevant today?” “What Sophie has achieved is a major feat and should be celebrated. Her place in pop history is firmly cemented now and her next album celebrates that with some of her best music to date.”
Co-president Tom Lewis praised the singer’s team, led by her manager Derek MacKillop of Wallace Productions, and said Ellis-Bextor’s creative ambition “shines as bright as ever”.
“We love that she is sitting at the table with us all, sleeves rolled up, leading the discussions and open to all ideas,” he said. “She has such a strong sense of her mission – that age is no barrier when it comes to loving great pop music. We are thrilled with the reception to her new material so the future feels very bright.”
To have something go viral in that way means that you’re not doing anything. It’s just happening all by itself
Sophie Ellis-Bextor
MacKillop said the release was being backed by “an ongoing digital campaign aimed at converting a newer, online audience into streamers and purchasers”.
“Our ongoing partnerships in the branding space, including syncs with singles Freedom Of The Night and Taste being used on two major campaigns across socials, TV, OOH and VOD, have created exciting new showcases for all that this album has to offer,” he added.
Ellis-Bextor also discussed the impact of the resurgence of her 2001 hit Murder On The Dancefloor following its use in the 2023 black comedy in Saltburn. It returned to its previous peak of No.2 on the back of a sync and was 2024’s biggest-selling single by a British female act. It has racked up total sales of 2,078,338 to date and has been streamed more than 760 million times on Spotify.
"I was a little bit excited [about Saltburn] because I saw the director was Emerald Fennell and I’d really enjoyed her first film, Promising Young Woman,” she said. “It’s quite hard, even now, to articulate what it’s like to be at the epicentre of something like that; it’s quite surreal.
"When you first release a song, you’re there talking about it, promoting, singing, going on radio, whatever. But to have something go viral in that way means that you’re not doing anything. It’s just happening all by itself. It was all taking off over Christmas, and we were just at home in our pyjamas, or having a family over, or cooking with the leftover turkey. And meanwhile, there’s the song, just twirling its way around the globe.
“The biggest shift was what happened in America, because I’d never been there before for work, never even done a radio interview there until last year. But how surprising, how glorious is that? It’s so fun that something so unexpected can happen.”
Subscribers can read the full interview here.
