Cecil’s New Single "Hot $hot" Was Inspired by 'Saltburn'

Sophy McGivern was meant to be an artist.

Her great-great uncle on her father’s side was Cecil McGivern, a writer who helped turn Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” into a screenplay. The film was nominated for five Oscars — including Writing (Screenplay) — at the 20th Academy Awards in 1948.

Cecil McGivern was also the BBC executive responsible for putting David Attenborough in front of the camera.

Now, decades later, Sophy McGivern uses the stage name Cecil to release music. Despite never meeting her uncle, she feels a connection to him.

“Nobody else in the family writes creatively, and I always felt this strong sense of familiarity with him on a really strange level,” she says.

Cecil began writing poetry at a young age and started to put her writing to music around the age of 12. Now, she releases music in her self-described “off-pop” style.

“I've always felt that I've never been that commercial. I like to keep a bit of an edge,” Cecil says.

Her music over the years has been compared to the likes of Lana Del Rey and Kate Bush, two artists that Cecil admires — and two artists who created their own lane. She also respects Sabrina Carpenter and her willingness to put a humorous spin on her music.

“I think [Sabrina Carpenter’s] music is great because it's pop but there's something that she does that makes it different to everything else,” Cecil says.

Some artists, like Lana Del Rey, create alter egos that show different versions of themselves out of necessity for the creative process.

When asked if Cecil — the girl who promotes her music on TikTok with a swirl in her hair and seemingly vintage-inspired outfits — is who she really is, she says: “It’s not me at all.”

That’s not to say Cecil is a concept created out of thin air: “I think Cecil lives inside me … she comes out when I'm being creative.”

That creativity — and the concept of an alter ego — led to Cecil’s latest song, “Hot $hot.”

“That's what I like about the way that I write: Sometimes it is about me, sometimes it's not,” Cecil says. In the case of “Hot $hot,” it’s not written from her perspective at all. The song was inspired by Barry Keoghan’s character Oliver Quick from the 2023 film ‘Saltburn,’ directed by Emerald Fennell.

The film follows Quick as he navigates university as a seemingly low-income student with no relationship with his parents. He attaches himself to Felix Catton, played by Jacob Elordi, only to reveal his obsessive, power-hungry nature later in the film.

“The song is basically about being interested in a man for his money, for what he can give you,” Cecil says. “[Oliver Quick] was interested in the money and power of what this family could give.”

That money-obsessed mentality led Cecil to stylize the song title with a dollar sign.

Originally, the song’s chorus was the pre-chorus, Cecil says, so she needed to come up with something new to fill the space. Writing a new pre-chorus led to her favorite line in the song: “We go together like Rolls and Royce.”

The line can be interpreted as a display of wealth, which fits perfectly with the connection to ‘Saltburn.’ The movie takes place in the United Kingdom, where Cecil is from.

Cecil went outside of her normal process when making “Hot $hot,” which is perfectly reasonable for an artist who says she doesn't like to follow rules.

Typically, she would bring a verse or chorus to her producer and build on it until they had a song. That process left Cecil feeling lost, and begged the question, ‘What’s next?’

“I wasn't having fun anymore, and I was starting to feel like I'm focusing too much on ‘What am I going to get out of it?’”

That changed when making “Hot $hot.”

“I went into the studio, nothing prepared at all, and I sort of thought, ‘Fuck it, I don't want to prepare anything. I don't want to go in with sort of an idea but then cling onto it and then get anxious that I haven't been able to make anything work,’” Cecil says.

Instead, she went to her producer, Pinkboy, with one goal in mind: have fun. Pinkboy laid down some beats and Cecil flowed over them, turning her melodies into words and her words into verses.

The song itself is fun because the process to make it was fun, Cecil says. Speaking of fun, Cecil hopes to play the song at KoKo’s, a concert venue and nightclub in Camden, London, or hear it at Heaven, a gay nightclub in London.

As for what’s next, Cecil is back to the studio making new music.

“I think it's a new era for Cecil and I think this is more of an upbeat, in your face era, which I like,” she says.