In my teenage years, I was one of the avid radio listeners, especially the well-known Prambors FM radio whose broadcasters nowadays are trying so hard to act like the hippest people in the city. It is kind of embarrassing to admit this, but what’s good from it is I was used to enjoy various genres of music. Scattered from punk-rock to the cheesy pop; I can say that those are my kind of music (until now, to be honest). Nevertheless, only a few musicians whose records I was able to buy, because at that time there were no downloadable MP3s and the price of the record wasn’t cheap for my age so I needed to save some from my pocket money. And I should say that those chosen few were the groups or people who may not be the so-called legendary musicians, but they were the ones who give me the instant infatuation. 

I recall it was 2001, and by that time the radio started to play dance music on their everyday list. Musics from MoJo, Artful Dodger, Daft Punk etc started coming out from the speaker in between the top 40 charts. I just passed the phase of listening Westlife (yes, I was the victim of boyband era. Bet you all did listen to them too, right?), and I caught a groovy tune from this female singer. I wasn’t familiar with the dance music scene (for heaven’s sake, I was 13 at that time; I even hadn’t known clubbing), but I couldn’t help myself not to boogie and dance along with this song. Not so long from there, the music video appeared on MTV (yes, still watched MTV back then) and I was stunned by the presence of this impeccably beautiful girl, who has strong square-jaw and a pair of perfect long legs, which makes her figure look exactly like a pale brunette Barbie. You can see in the video she wore really pretty dresses, the winged-eyeliner and the red lips made her really stood out and who wouldn’t adore those sassy dance movements she did? Therefore I knew the name of this singer was Sophie Ellis Bextor and after saving some money, I decided to buy her debut album. 

“Read My Lips”; that was the name of the first dance record I bought. The album cover was really cool; it was a B/W picture showing Sophie put her wrist above her temple and her eyes wincing to the opposite side, exposing the eyeliner that she always puts on. The tracks were as great as the cover; very dance-able and I love how Sophie sounded really great and we can hear a thick English-accent in every single word she sang. My favorite track was probably “Music Gets The Best of Me”, but I also really love the closing track “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)”. You really got to hear this album, because for me her debut album is the best among all the album she has produced.

Sophie is one of female artist whose musics and songs make me fall in love so quickly, and so happy that finally she is planning to hold a gig here in Indonesia. I am excited, but I still don’t know whether I would be attending this event or not. Maybe I should find a company to see her, or maybe I should volunteer myself to write about the gig; I am still not sure. Nevertheless, it would be so cool if I can write about her concert or maybe do some interview session with her. And as far as I can remember, I still kept the album somewhere in my house, though I couldn’t remember where I put it the last time. So for awhile, let me wish a bit about this aficionado imagination and keep it as a dream. But if I really had any chance to do that, I will surely bring the album and asked her to sign my first dance record.