Sophie Ellis-Bextor

In the first part of our latest Q&A, Sophie tells us about the "dance-y" new songs she's working on and how Groovejet was written. Look out for the next two parts of the chat soon! 

Hello Sophie, how are you?
I’m good thank you.

What are you up to?
I’m actually looking through a load of backing tracks. I’ve been sent some dance-y stuff over the last few weeks. So I’m going though them and seeing if there’s anything I want to work on.

So people just send you tracks out of the blue?
Yeah. It’s how I used to work years ago and then I stopped doing so much of that and started working in the studio with people. But then because I’d had quite a quiet January it’s been quite nice getting things sent over again. So I’ve just been pottering through them to see if there’s anything that grabs me and makes me want to write a chorus for it.

What’s usually the ratio of good stuff when you go through tracks like that?
It’s probably about 50/50, I would say. But some stuff you just get ideas for straight away, while other stuff I might like but realise it’s not quite right for me. So I would say there’s probably about 25% of it that I decide is worth working on. And the ones I’m actually disciplined enough to finish is probably about 5%.

Have you heard anything in this batch that you think could be good?
Yeah. There are two tracks which I’ve got on the go at the moment which I like.

What kind of thing?
Both quite dance-y. One is slightly Robyn-esque, I suppose. And the other one is a bit more anthemic, hands-in-the-air kind of thing.

And you receive them as instrumentals?
Yeah, that’s right.

Do they have any control over what words you choose to put on there?
Well, it will usually go back and forth a bit. That’s why working in a studio with people is much easier, because you thrash that out at the time. But I sometimes find that if I work with people I haven’t got a long working relationship with I can feel quite self-conscious trying to come up with stuff in the moment. So it can be easier to do it at home on your own. That’s actually the way that Groovejet started.

Ah, really?
Yes, that one was an instrumental that they sent to me. I used to work like that a lot. With Groovejet I went into a studio and just recorded what I’d done, which was verses, a chorus and a middle eight. I didn’t realise they’d been sending the same track to lots of people, but then they came back to me and said they liked my verses and my middle eight, but asked if I could use a Rob Davis chorus. And I was a bit confused, because I was quite earnest and this was actually the first song I’d ever written that was released. I was like, well, it doesn’t really make sense now, because the chorus and verse are talking about different things, so I had to rewrite it.

What was your original chorus then?
Well, Rob’s chorus was much more straight to the point and had a really great hook with a really good lyric. I think mine was a little bit more complicated. His was far and away better than mine! Mine was not so much a chorus with a capital C.

Do those old demo versions exist?
Probably somewhere. I haven’t really chucked much out, but I’ve got boxes and boxes of CDs, and I’m not exactly sure where it would be. I’ve still got the old demo cassettes from theaudience! I’m not sure whether I’ll ever come to actually sit down and go through them all. There’s always so many other things to be doing. I thought I’d get so much done in the first three months of the year before this baby comes, but actually I find if I’m not working then I want to be spending time with the kids. So yesterday I went to the Natural History Museum with Kit.

How was that?
It was actually really sweet. I hadn’t ever taken him there before and his big brother was at school, so we went on the tube and went to a cafe before the museum and then went around the dinosaurs. It was really nice to have that one on one time. It was a lovely day.