‘In January, it was the most heard song on Earth!’: the amazing story behind Murder on the Dancefloor

Adored by the Obamas and worshipped by Joni Mitchell, songwriter Gregg Alexander looks back at Murder on the Dancefloor, given a new life by Saltburn, and his other smash, You Get What You Give

In 1994, Gregg Alexander got into his blue Ford Mustang to go out clubbing, but the old car wouldn’t start. “I had a moment of annoyance that I couldn’t go to the house clubs in Detroit,” he remembers. So he reached for the acoustic guitar in the back, channelling his emotion into a song beginning “It’s murder on the dancefloor, but you’d better not kill the groove.”

“You know how Paul McCartney originally sang about scrambled eggs in Yesterday?” he chuckles. “‘Murder on the dancefloor’ wasn’t anything deep from my subconscious. It was just a dummy lyric that was kind of sung for fun, but then I couldn’t better it.”