Live Review: Sophie Ellis-Bextor @ Forum Melbourne

Holiday Sidewinder sets the tone with theatrical flair and alt-pop swagger, warming up the room with her signature blend of tongue-in-cheek theatricality.

Two fairy-lit palm trees decorate the stage, and her set glitters with melancholy and expressive movement, striking a perfect balance between playful and poignant. With her bold fashion choices, including a matching leopard-print outfit, her performance is full of high energy to prime the crowd perfectly.

The stage background lights up with vibrant colours and dramatic visuals to welcome Sophie Ellis-Bextor and her band. Starting with Relentless Love, she immediately frames the evening around a single emotional thread of joy without hesitation or apology. Her voice is crystal clear and effortlessly cool, cutting through the room as the crowd eases into the groove. The momentum builds quickly with her crowd-pleasing rendition of Cher’s Take Me Home, reimagined with slick disco textures that fit perfectly at home in her catalogue.

The Forum truly comes alive during Dolce Vita and Hypnotized, where pulsing synths and elegant choreography turn the theatre into a party. Ellis-Bextor parades around the stage and unleashes a few high kicks to celebrate on this Friday night, reminding us of her enduring relevance, sharp pop instincts, and magnetic stage presence.

“This is so special. Honestly, I didn’t ever think I would be lucky enough to come and spend the night with you here. And you’re part of my history tonight, because this is actually my first ever headline show here in Australia,” she exclaims. She continues to share some impressive fun facts she’s learnt about Melbourne during her time here.

Ellis-Bextor then pulls out a shiny button prop to help her decide what happens next. She presses it to help choose one of the options displayed on the screen, and it selects ‘Sophie’s choice’, leaving the power in her hands.

Ellis-Bextor decides to play a song called Move This Mountain from her debut album, Read My Lips, which is about to celebrate its 25th anniversary. “I met my husband Richard [Jones, bassist], who was in my first touring band 24 years ago, and that’s actually also the last tour where we played this song,” she reveals before sharing this special deep-cut moment.

Ellis-Bextor has had a pretty extraordinary couple of years and has been extra busy due to two things: one is that she released her eighth album, Perimenopop. And two, due to an unexpected second tour around the globe with her viral hit Murder On The Dance Floor.

“When the song was having this resurgence, and I was also making a new record, I took all of that happy adrenaline that was happening and poured it into the record. So, the album was made in a sort of slightly tipsy, giddy kind of way.

“There was one song that became like this sort of beating heart of the album because it’s a tribute to the fact that the most precious thing you can give someone you love is the thing you don’t know how much of it you have, and that’s your time,” she tells before sharing the emotional track Time and the crowd is fully locked in—hands in the air, voices raised, bodies swaying in unison.

Following a quick costume change, Ellis-Bextor returns to the stage draped in high-fashion glamour and looking like a sparkling disco ball. The shift signals a new chapter in the set, which is sleeker, darker, and more euphoric. Ready For Your Love (her collaboration with Felix Jaehn) showcases her ability to seamlessly bridge classic disco with contemporary dance-pop, sounding as fresh as anything currently ruling European club charts.

She uses the button prop again to help her choose a song from her new album Perimenopop – her first dance-pop record in about a decade. “It was so nice to run back into the arms of that genre, because it always makes me feel so happy, and it’s such a tonic,” she says.

“At the top of my list, originally as a title, it was Sheila. If I had been Australian, I would 100% call it that, but we don’t really have the equivalent in the UK,” she laughs.

“I was thinking about the narrative around middle-aged women, and how some aspects of it can seem a little gloomy, not very exciting and possibly you might feel a little bit encouraged to diminish yourself a little bit. So, I wanted this album to represent the other side of that coin,” Ellis-Bextor reveals, before singing Glamorous.

We all join in to sing with her on Get Over You filling the room with echoes of “Ai-ai-ai-ah” and plenty of shimmying. She then takes us on a nostalgic trip to the disco with a masterfully constructed megamix spanning decades of dancefloor hits, including Lady (Hear Me Tonight), Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love), Can’t Fight This Feeling, and ABBA’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) to elevate the energy levels even higher.

Ellis-Bextor shows off her rhythmic gymnastics with a ribbon-twirling routine on Freedom of the Night, followed by a stunning cover of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love that pushes the show into full-blown club territory. Not Giving Up On Love (her collaboration with Armin van Buuren) feels particularly poignant with its euphoric trance elements washing over the room. She pushes the disco dial even further with Layers, Crying At The Discoteque (an Alcazar cover) and Heartbreak (Make Me A Dancer) to form a triumphant run of glittering pop perfection.

The nostalgic trip leads to the pivotal moment of pure euphoria with Murder on the Dancefloor erupting into the room like a glitter bomb, the crowd singing every word back at her in unison for the iconic track.

The encore offers a softer landing with Bittersweet shimmering with reflective warmth and then just when we think it’s over, Ellis-Bextor appears in a booth in the middle of the theatre for an acoustic acapella performance of Don’t Know What You’ve Got ’Til It’s Gone to close the night on a note of gratitude and emotional release—an unexpected but deeply satisfying finale.