The video for her single "Chandelier" has over 50 million views on YouTube. Her live performances of the song have gone viral. She's got a new album called 1,000 Forms of Fear out this week. (go preorder it on iTunes!!!) Between "Chandelier," and songwriting credits for the likes of Beyonce, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Britney Spears and Ne-Yo, Sia — who claims that becoming "tabloid fodder" is her worst nightmare — is becoming a celebrity.
This latest dance with fame (she's been recording professionally for 17 years) can be traced to one song, really. It's called "Titanium" — a collaboration with DJ David Guetta that was released in late 2011. If you didn't hear it on the radio dozens of times a few years ago, you heard it in the movie Pitch Perfect. It's the song Anna Kendrick's character sings in the shower, the one that gets her a spot in the a cappella group.
Sia actually didn't write "Titanium" for herself. She thought someone else was going to sing it, but Guetta had other plans.
"I wrote it for Alicia Keys. And then she passed," Sia says, standing next to a black upright piano. "And then Mary J. Blige sang it. And then he took her vocal off it, and put my vocal back on, my demo vocal, without asking and released it. And I never even knew it was gonna happen, and I was really upset. Because I had just retired, I was trying to be a pop songwriter, not an artist."
...Around the time "Titanium" hit, she was 35 and wanted to step out of the spotlight and into songwriting alone. Instead, "Titanium," and other Sia songs (often sung by other people), have made her the kind of celebrity she didn't want to be.
So, she has stopped showing her face.
"I thought it would be a funny joke that I'm getting away with," she says, laughing at herself. "And it was, partly, I don't wanna go out and sell my soul, my body, my peace of mind."
Sia now refuses to be photographed. She was on the cover of Billboard magazine, recently, with a paper bag over her head. She says she isn't going to tour anymore, and when she does perform, it's with her back to the audience.
What Sia will show is a blonde bob wig; it's become her trademark.
"I guess a year and a half ago, maybe I was meditating and I thought, oh, I'll just be the blonde bob!" she says, smiling, in classic black Reebok high tops, black tights and a Flashdance-y hot-pink top. "If Amy Winehouse is the bouffant, then I'll be the blonde bob." Sia's real hair is actually longer than the bob, but just as blonde.
The chorus of "Chandelier," like those in a lot of Sia's songs, is colossal. But "Chandelier" is actually a dark song about alcoholism — partly Sia's, who has been sober now for over three years. The song is also a kind of retort to every other pop song you hear on the radio celebrating the nonstop party.
"That's why 'Chandelier' was interesting to me. ... I wrote the song because there's so many party-girl anthems in pop. And I thought it'd be interesting to do a different take on that," Sia said. "For some reason ... I didn't wanna give it away."
"We don't have to worry so much about what anyone else is gonna think about," Kurstin says. "We're not worried about what the label thinks, what's the single. With Sia, I feel like we get back to how we first wrote songs. And that's just cool. Someone will like it, hopefully, and if not, we'll put it out ourselves."
The two work very quickly. The hit she wrote for Rihanna, "Diamonds," was reportedly written in 14 minutes. Sia says "Chandelier" took a little longer.
"I mean, 'Chandelier' took like four minutes to write the chords, then like 12-15 minutes to write the lyrics," Sia says. "Probably 10 or 15 minutes to cut the vocals."
"So, an hour for a hit?" I ask her. "Prob, yeah," she replies nonchalantly, not showing off, just stating facts.
Sia doesn't actually read music, and says she barely can crank out a chord or two on the piano. So, a lot of times, Kurstin will start playing, and Sia will just scat until words take shape. She did that, during the interview, to show how she writes songs. She ended up with the start of a song she says she'll name "Invincible."
"I wrote an 'Invincible' song with someone else," she says after spitting out a new chorus. "But nobody's cutting it, so I'm going to lift that."
When Sia writes for other people, she says, it's less about making a hit and more like a therapy session. Before she starts writing, she'll have the singer come in and talk about whatever they're going through. When she wrote with Christina Aguilera, they talked about divorce. When Sia wrote with Lea Michele, they talked about each of them having a boyfriend who died. In 1997, Sia's boyfriend was fatally hit by a taxi. Back then, her therapy was drugs and alcohol, but over time, Alcoholics Anonymous helped her cope. It has also helped her songwriting.
"I can sit while people cry," she says. "I can stand when someone's angry. Like, I don't know. I'm fine around other people's feelings. It doesn't make me nervous or anxious. Probably because of the program. If you're in an AA meeting, people are sharing. Sometimes there's crying. Sometimes there's feeling. And we're just witnessing it."
That is perhaps the best way to think of Sia's music. Some of them may be pop hits, but they've got layers. Her songs are bearing witness to a lot. And they are supporting, for now at least, a career that doesn't require the singer to be traditionally famous. She doesn't have to show her face. She doesn't have to go on tour. She doesn't have to be as big a deal as the pop icons she now writes for.
"I don't need to promote this album at all," she says, "because I make enough money to live nicely from all my pop songwriting."bowing
As the interview comes to an end, Sia shows me her blonde bob wigs. She pours at least a half-dozen out of a plastic bag onto the floor, while she thinks out loud about what exactly she wants out of her career.
"I'm trying to have a good life," she says as we look at the wigs, which symbolize her fame and what she's doing to escape that fame, all at once. "Basically, my plan is to enjoy what I have."
Source: NPR Article
What's your favorite Sia song?