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Sophie Ellis-Bextor

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Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Sophie Michelle Ellis-Bextor (born 10 April 1979) is a multi-platinum selling English pop singer and songwriter. Her music is a mixture of mainstream pop, disco and 1980s electronic influences.

Biography

Sophie Michelle Ellis-Bextor was born in West Middlesex to Janet Ellis, then an actress, but later better known as a presenter on the TV series Blue Peter (on which Sophie appeared with her mother at the age of six, modelling snoods), and Robin Bextor, an award-winning film director. Ellis and Bextor divorced when Sophie was four years old. She has three sisters and two brothers. She has often spoken about being very close to her family growing up and she often takes her brothers and sisters to work with her. Her brother Jackson Ellis-Leach is currently her drummer. Her official website hyphenates her surname, which is the joining of her parents' surnames; some other sources separate the names with a space. She went to school at St. Stephen's School and later Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith. Among her earliest public performances were with the W11 Opera children's opera from the age of thirteen.[1] On April 23, 2004, Sophie gave birth to her first child, a boy named Sonny. The father is the bass guitarist for The Feeling Richard Jones, whom she later married in 2005. Previously, she dated her manager Andy Boyd for six years. In 2007, Sophie appeared at Christmas in the Robbie the Reindeer Episode, Close Encounters of the Herd Kind. Sophie was depicted as a female alien at the closure of the story, singing the song 'Supersonic', the last track on her third solo studio album Trip The Light Fantastic.

An advocate for animal rights, she posed for PETA's anti–fur clothing advertisement.[2] She is also currently fronting a campaign for The Children's Society encouraging people to log onto the Hundreds and Thousands of Childhood Memories Website to donate their favourite childhood memory.[3]

theaudience

Ellis-Bextor began her career in 1997, with an indie band called theaudience. She sang the lead vocal in the band. While she was a band member, readers of Melody Maker elected her to the Number 1 position among the 'most sexy people in rock'. She recorded a duet with Manic Street Preachers—Black Holes for the Young—as a B-side for their 1998 single The Everlasting. Some songs released by theaudience are I Got the Wherewithal, If You Can't Do It When You're Young; When Can You Do It?, I Know Enough (I Don't Get Enough), and A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed (perhaps their best-known single). The band split in December 1998. In 1999 Ellis-Bextor made an appearance on the Departure Lounge album Out Of Here.

Rise to fame

After theaudience split, Sophie took a year off from singing; she tried modelling, but didn't like it and soon gave it up. She also started writing a novel. In 2000, Sophie collaborated with Italian DJ Spiller on adding vocals to his then-instrumental club track Groovejet, her first recorded work since that with theaudience. Groovejet (If This Ain't Love) entered the U.K. charts at No. 1, just beating then-former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham on her first solo outing to the top spot. Since then, the two have been known as rivals.[4] ['edit by zak: request for ref. 032908'] 'Groovejet won several awards: No. 1, Pop Top 20; No. 1, ILR; No. 1, Radio 1; No. 8, top dance track of 2000 and single of the year in Melody Maker. In the Metro Newspaper, it received ninth place in the contest for the Greatest No. 1 of all time, beating even Madonna.[5] In 2000, it was a finalist in The Record of the Year. In that same year, it won the awards for Best Single and Best Ibiza Tune at the Ericsson Muzik Awards.[6]

Read My Lips

In 2001, Sophie released her debut album, Read My Lips. It reached No. 2 on the UK charts and spawned four top-twenty hit singles. Her rework of Cher's "Take Me Home" reached No. 2, as did "Murder on the Dancefloor", which became Sophie's biggest single to date and was on charts for twenty-three weeks.[7] "Murder on the Dancefloor" became Europe's most played song of 2002. In 2002, Read My Lips was re-released with two new songs (and a live version of "Groovejet") and Ellis-Bextor won the Recording Artist Award at that year's Showbusiness Awards.[8] Her third single, "Get Over You" / "Move This Mountain" was released in June 2002 and reached No. 3. The fourth single, "Music Gets the Best of Me", rose to No. 14 in December. At the beginning of 2002, Ellis-Bextor was nominated for the "British Female Solo Artist" BRIT Award, going on to be nominated for a further two consecutive years.[9][10][11]

Shoot from the Hip

Her second album, Shoot from the Hip, was released in October 2003. Although it was not as commercially successful as her previous material, it held two further top-ten singles. The album reached no higher than No. 19 on the UK charts; its two singles were "Mixed Up World", which reached No. 7, and "I Won't Change You", reaching No. 9. Around this time, rivalry against Victoria Beckham was suggested again; Victoria's single "This Groove" / "Let Your Head Go" reached No. 3, a higher position in the charts than "I Won't Change You". During this time Sophie became pregnant and plans for a third and fourth single as well as the Shoot From The Hip Tour were scrapped.

  • In that year, she was considered for the role of Kitty, in the film Chicago.

Trip the Light Fantastic

After that, Sophie paused her musical career to take care of her first child, a boy named Sonny (born April 23, 2004), with Richard Jones, who is bass guitarist for The Feeling. The pair later married, on 25 June 2005 in Italy.

In early 2005, she performed on a track by the duo Busface, entitled "Circles (Just My Good Time)"; credited as "Mademoiselle E.B." in order to not have this be mistaken for a single from her next album. In 2004, she announced that she was working on a third album. She worked with Fred Schneider of The B-52s and Richard Barone (formerly of The Bongos), Shelly Poole (formerly of Alisha's Attic), Cathy Dennis and Kerin Smith (formerly of theaudience) among others to create a fun dance/party, disco-pop album which was released on May 21st, 2007 and is entitled Trip the Light Fantastic.[12]

In August 2006 it was announced that she was the new 'face' of high street fashion chain Monsoon replacing the model Sophie Dahl.

Before the album two singles were released, Catch You, which charted in the UK through downloads alone at No. 18 and peaked at No. 8 after a physical release and Me and My Imagination which was released on May 14th and charted at No. 23. Her album Trip the Light Fantastic debuted at No. 7 on the UK albums chart and just missed the top twenty the following week, falling to No. 21.

Sophie supported George Michael on his UK tour leg in June 2007. Her own UK tour was due to start on the 14th August 2007, entitled "Trip The Light Fantastic Tour", but, on September 8 2007, on her official website, Sophie said that she had postponed it because she has been invited to be the "special guest" on the forthcoming Take That European Tour, which kicks off on October 11 2007 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Sophie confirmed that her tour will be re-scheduled for March next year as it had proven difficult, if not impossible to do both. All tickets purchased will be valid for next year.[13]

The third single off Trip The Light Fantastic was Today the Sun's on Us, which was released on 13th August 2007. The track received good reviews, and the accompanying video, directed by Sophie Muller and shot in Reykjavik, Iceland has achieved strong airplay on music channels; this did not help sales of the single, however, which debuted on the UK Singles Chart at No. 64. The single, however, was responsible for the album's re-entry into the top 100, where it spent another two weeks.

On the first of September 2007, Sophie took part in Sopot Festival 2007 in Poland, representing the UK.

She performed "If I Can't Dance" on DanceX, BBC One on 28 July 2007 and confirmed that it would be the fourth single in an interview with Digital Spy on 2 August 2007, a position that was later retracted in an interview on her website dated 12 August 2007.[14][13] "Love Is Here" was confirmed on her website as the fourth single, however, that was scrapped as she was supposed to release a brand new single in late November which was to be included on the following "Greatest Hits" compilation. Then the release date of the Greatest Hits was pushed back to March.

The fourth album

Although previously stating that a Greatest Hits was to be released, this has been postponed, because she wants to change her music direction after her Greatest Hits come and doesn't feel like doing that right now. So she is now recording a fourth studio album, due to be out in September.

For now, Sophie has worked with Groove Armada, Calvin Harris and Cathy Dennis as well as hoping to work with Gregg Alexander on new tracks for the album, with one expected to be released as a single prior to the album's release.

This album will be Sophie's fourth album. According to Sophie, around a third of the album is complete. One of the new tracks is a re-recording of "Off and On", an outtake from Roisin Murphy's album Overpowered, written by Calvin Harris and Cathy Dennis (the original version leaked onto file sharing services in the summer of 2007). As well as this, a new track written with Freemasons entitled "Heartbreak Make Me a Dancer" is a strong candidate for the first single released from the album. Sophie also said, however, the first single might be a song which she has not written yet.

As a taster for the new album Sophie has confirmed that she will be performing at Scotland's Hamilton Park Racecourse on Friday 16th May 2008.

Discography

Further information: Sophie Ellis-Bextor discography

References

  1. ^ W11 Opera Website
  2. ^ 'Read My Lips' Sensation Says, 'Don't Wear Fur!'
  3. ^ Plea For Happy Childhood Memories
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference askmen was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Melody Maker 2000
  6. ^ Spiller and Jaxx take Muzik honours
  7. ^ Murder On The Dancefloor, World Charts
  8. ^ Varierty Club Website
  9. ^ BRIT Awards 2004
  10. ^ The Brits 2003, The Nominees
  11. ^ Brits Awards: The Nominees
  12. ^ Sophie Ellis-Bextor's Official Forum
  13. ^ a b Sophie Ellis-Bextor's official website
  14. ^ "Video: Sophie Ellis-Bextor speaks". Digital Spy. 2 August 2007. Retrieved 2007-02-08.


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