Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 single Murder on the Dancefloor has returned to the Top 10 for the first time in 22 years owing to its appearance in the climactic scene of the Emerald Fennell-directed film Saltburn.
The song charted at No 8, with 2.2m streams; prior to the release of Saltburn on Amazon Prime, weekly streams of the song peaked at 293,000, according to Official Charts Company (OCC) data.
Ellis-Bextor’s second solo single originally peaked at No 2 in December 2001, when it was beaten to the top spot by Daniel Bedingfield’s Gotta Get Thru This.
The song’s resurgence was aided by TikTok: celebrities including Paris Hilton, revealing her secret pregnancy, have used the song to soundtrack videos. The song’s hashtag has more than 40m views on the app.
Spotify told the BBC that the song also featured on a number of New Year’s Eve playlists: 31 December 2023 was the hit’s best day on the platform, with 1.5m streams.
Ellis-Bextor, 44, told the OCC: “I’m always very connected to my music, and one thing I’ve always loved about my work is its ability to surprise me. Murder on the Dancefloor is a song I’ve been singing for 20 years, and I’m on really good terms with it. I love singing it, I love performing it and what’s happening at the moment is kind of magical, actually.”
She thanked fans for taking the song on “such a magical adventure” and said “I’m just having so much fun”.
The song is featured in the final scene of Saltburn in which the protagonist Oliver, played by Barry Keoghan, dances naked around the mansion of his university friends, having killed the matriarch Elspeth and assumed ownership of the titular mansion and the family’s fortune.
It is the latest vintage hit to see a significant uplift thanks to its use in a film or TV show; in 2022, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill reached No 1 as a result of its use in Netflix’s Stranger Things.
Earlier in the week, Ellis-Bextor celebrated the song’s rise in the midweek charts by posting a video of herself performing it in a pair of antlers – a motif of the Saltburn estate – in tribute to Oliver’s dance moves in the scene.
Ellis-Bextor told the BBC that she knew how Fennell intended to use the song when she asked for permission to include it in the film. She said she had seen the divisive gory flick at a screening, alongside her mum, Janet Ellis, and her 19-year-old son, Sonny, and worried about how he would feel watching the film’s seedier scenes alongside his mother and grandmother.
“But he was fine. He was like ‘that was in my Top 10 favourite films I’ve ever seen’. I was sort of projecting my worry on him but I did have my head in my hands at least twice during the film – you can probably guess when.”
This week’s No 1 single is Stick Season by Noah Kahan, the Vermont songwriter’s first UK chart-topper. Last week it was one of only three non-Christmas songs in the entire Top 40, the majority of which have dropped out in the first chart of the new year.
