Sophie in Attitude Mag and Marie Claire + Interview on Signal 1

Part 1 of the Radio Interview by Simon Morykin on Total Acces. Radio station is Signal 1. There will be a Part 2 tomorrow.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D56COVEH
(thanks to Renzo for the heads-up and Paul for the recording)
Chat about Sophie's clothes, getting splashed with paint for the Bittersweet video, being surreal as a popstar, attitide to praise and criticism, only tweeting about professional activities on Twitter.

The write up from Attitude magazine. (thanks to Renzo)

Disco queen Sophie Ellis-Bextor tells how clubbing lead to an unexpected passion for Djing

What was your first ever clubbing experience?
It was Pop Scene, and indie club on a Friday night that I used to go to every week. I used to live for the weekend at, it was all about what you were going to wear, who you were going to see. That was my first bid for freedom I suppose, you can slightly reinvent yourself, can’t you? I was a little bit of a show-off. They had a dance floo with a stage, and once you got your position at the front you could dance to the club. I completely cringe about it now. I think I was quite OTT. When you’re 16/17/18 you don’t realise how the way you’re moving can be interpreted. Ha! I’d better choose my words carefully. I loved that feeling of going out with your friends and getting really over-excited when a song you loved came on. It all seemed to be incredibly important, and for me, a lot of that stuff still is.

Do you prefer gay or straight clubs?
In general I prefer going to gay clubs, I find them much more friendly. I prefer the music. Straight clubs can get a bit lairy. Although I have got lots of straight male friends that are brilliant dancers, there’s still a bit of stigma to men taking to the dance floor in straight clubs. It’s good when you can all get on the dance floor together.

Have you ever been in a gay club and heard one of your own tracks?
They once played Murder On The Dance Floor at Wigout and I suddenly felt like I was the most popular girl in the room, it was absolutely brilliant. Is that a bit too egotistical? Ha! Sometimes it can be incredibly embarrassing, but in that instance it really came together, because when it came on there were all these little faces beaming at me and it just made me feel “Aaah!” because I wasn’t the most popular girl at school, and I suddenly felt like I had been, it was nice. Like I’d found my home.

Tell me about Djing with your husband Richard
We starded that because I couldn’t find exactly the place I wanted to go to. We play party classics, stuff that makes you want to dance. We generally like similar things, we don’t really argue about what to play. It’s only putting a song on really. You try and take people on a bit of a journey with you. Young Hearts Run Free always sounds phenomenal, and Band of Gold. Old school disco and northern soul has lovely musicianship. I think a lot of clubs are a bit patronising of their audience. While nobody likes a really, really clever DJ where you stand at the bar nodding, thinking “good tune” but not actually dancing, at the same time its good to play stuff that’s a bit fresh and maybe be a little experimental and fun with it. People can either take it too seriously or be a bit lazy sometimes.

Your new album is pretty dancey – has that been informed by going out?
That’s definitely part of it actually, because I found that DJing was a really good way of just becoming a fan of music again, rather than thinking about “how well did that do in the charts?” or “that’s that producer or songwriter”. When you just hear something its much more immediate – it either does something exciting or it doesn’t, and you can’t fake that feeling when your tummy does a little flip.

Bittersweet is out 3 May on Fascination Records

And scans from Marie Claire magazine (thanks to Renzo)