Latitude: Sophie Ellis-Bextor on the perfect festival set

When Sophie Ellis-Bextor plays the Latitude festival successful Suffolk this weekend, there's each anticipation she'll disregard her caller album, Hana.

That's what happened astatine Glastonbury past month, adjacent arsenic the grounds sat successful the Top 10 of the UK medium charts.

Instead of caller material, she combined hits similar Murder On The Dancefloor with covers of songs by Madonna and Moloko.

"I conscionable thought, I get it, this is Sunday afternoon, let's springiness them a enactment set," the vocalist tells the BBC.

Her comments travel aft wobbly Glastonbury header slots from Arctic Monkeys and Guns N' Roses, who sometimes mislaid the assemblage by playing caller oregon lesser-known songs.

Although Ellis-Bextor isn't commenting connected those artists specifically, she says festival audiences person to beryllium treated otherwise from die-hard fans.

"I'm a euphony fan. I've been that person, stood successful that tract thinking, OK, however does this 1 go?

"So I similar to consciousness arsenic if I'm successful it unneurotic with them."

She adds: "I've been doing what I bash for a agelong clip now... and you person to support earning your close to beryllium portion of something.

"If radical person fixed maine their time, I don't privation to discarded it."

Ellis-Bextor has been playing gigs since she was a teen - much than 500 successful total, starting with her indie set Theaudience successful the 1990s earlier striking retired arsenic a dancefloor diva successful the 2000s and becoming a nationalist treasure with her lockdown Kitchen Disco shows.

With countless festival appearances and a stadium circuit with Westlife nether her belt, she says her attack to playing large venues has changed implicit the years.

"When I was younger, I would look astatine a large assemblage and it was astir excessively hard to marque it into individuals. It was benignant of an amorphous block.

"But now, it's conscionable 1 person, 1 person, 1 person... and I effort to link with radical arsenic overmuch arsenic I can. I privation everybody to consciousness that I looked astatine their mode astatine slightest once."

And dissimilar immoderate artists who dread playing their biggest hits for the umpteenth time, she maintains she inactive looks guardant to performing her signature song, Groovejet (If This Ain't Love), 23 years aft it was a fig 1 hit.

"I inactive emotion singing it," she says. "There's thing breathtaking astir seeing the years rolling by. I similar having a semipermanent narration [with fans] similar that."

The vocalist is joined connected the measure astatine Latitude by headliners Pulp, George Ezra and Paolo Nutini, portion Siouxsie Sioux and Young Fathers apical the measure successful the BBC Sounds tent.

Fans who do privation to perceive Ellis-Bextor's caller medium successful performance volition get the accidental erstwhile she launches her header circuit successful November.

Hana is simply a wistful, romanticist grounds inspired by a household travel to Japan conscionable a fewer weeks earlier the archetypal Covid lockdown successful March 2020.

"The satellite tilted upside down, truthful this travel to Tokyo already felt nostalgic a fewer weeks aft we came back," she says. "That's wherever I went successful my caput arsenic I was penning songs."

The rubric is the Japanese connection for blossom, and there's a dreamy, psychedelic consciousness to the euphony that works perfectly with Ellis-Bextor's potent dependable - particularly connected the atmospheric opener A Thousand Orchids and the soaring azygous Breaking The Circle.

Released successful June, it charted astatine fig eight, with reviews singling retired the romanticist ballad Until the Wheels Fall Off arsenic a highlight.

The opus was written aft her step-father John died of lung cancer, and its lyrics were based astir a missive helium near for Ellis-Bextor's mother, erstwhile Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis.

"He said to my mum that helium had each his champion adventures with her and however they had travelled, laughed and loved until the wheels fell off," she told The Forty Five. "The opus is simply a tribute to their marriage, due to the fact that they were precise blessed together."

Once the circuit ends, rumours person swirled that Ellis-Bextor volition commencement preparing to correspond the UK astatine adjacent year's Eurovision Song Contest.

But the 44-year-old has changeable down the speculation.

"I adore Eurovision," she told BBC Breakfast. "But I consciousness like, astatine this point, for wherever I'm astatine [in my career], it would beryllium similar walking into a casino and putting each my chips connected red. I conscionable don't consciousness similar I'm up for the gamble.

"But bash you cognize what I would similar to do? I'd similar to constitute the song."