If Sophie Ellis-Bextor‘s Saltburn featured track “Murder On The Dancefloor” has been burned into your brain in the best way imaginable, you can partly thank a songwriting genius behind one of the late-90s biggest hits.
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Though best known for their 1998 single "You Get What You Give", its recently been revealed that Alt-Pop rockers The New Radicals almost took ownership of another massive earworm early on in their career.
The band’s frontman, Gregg Alexander, is credited as a co-writer and co-producer of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 single, which has taken on a new life after being featured in the 2023 Barry Keoghan flick, Saltburn.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Alexander says the song was initially intended to be his band’s debut single, instead of "You Get What You Give," admitting he “almost flipped a coin between the two songs.”
"The record company wanted something urgently and I didn’t have the time or the budget to finish both," he says. Written on an acoustic guitar in the back seat of his car, "I felt like ‘Murder’ was a monster but ‘You Get What You Give’ was a masterpiece. It was everything I’d always wanted to say inside five minutes," he admits. After The New Radicals' time ended, Gregg and Sophie went on to finish the single together. “When I met Sophie we embarked on a creative journey, the first of three or four Top 10 hits we had.”
Sharing a clip of The New Radicals' demo, Alexander says the track "may have gone unheard, and the world never known, were it not for Sophie’s belief in the song and her pop brilliance! Enjoy – and eternal thank you from New Radicals to Sophie Ellis-Bextor!"
Listen to The New Radicals' demo version of the song HERE.