Sophie Ellis-Bextor Essentials

Editors’ Notes There's a beautiful icy fragility in Sophie Ellis-Bextor's voice, as if her natural English reserve is about to be shattered by a rush of overwhelming emotion. This lends a dramatic weight to the warm, giddy disco-house songs with which she made her name, and gives a stirring lift when that tremulous purr is borne aloft by the ecstatic release of saturated trance synths. Those diamond sharp consonants give her tartly worded electro-pop songs gravitas, even when the lyrics seem frivolous. When paired with a sober piano, choir, and strings, she sounds positively gothic.