Sia Furler: Fame does not become her



This was published 11 years ago

Sia Furler: Fame does not become her

By Andrew Murfett

After 17 years, Sia is making it big and the resultant attention has made her very anxious, writes Andrew Murfett.

Sia Furler deals in contradictions. She doesn't like talking to people she doesn't know but enjoys interviews with strangers on the phone. She despises fame and the way it changes lives but obsessively consumes vacuous American reality shows seemingly doing the same thing.

'Now I just want to be invisible' ... Sia Furler says she is planning her retirement.


Lying in bed in her New York apartment, the Adelaide-born singer-songwriter is attempting to explain why, just as her 17-year career is nearing its peak, she is planning her retirement from public life.

"I'm getting a bit famous now," Sia (like Beyonce or Madonna, it's first name only, please) says softly, "and I'm very anxious."

The 34-year-old today releases We Are Born, an effervescent, radio-friendly pop album that incited a bidding war among the world's biggest record labels (Sony, home to Christina and Britney, won).

Far from selling out, this is a shrewd album that assembles all the best components of her previous three albums: her songwriting skill, ear for melody and ability to select the right collaborators.

If the so-called tastemakers and judges lining up to sing her praises are right, this is Her Moment.

So why would she walk away just as this momentum is coalescing to place her in pop's upper echelon? It's a case, perhaps, of pop eating itself.

"I don't really even go out that much now except to walk my dogs, because I don't want to be recognised. I used to be a really friendly person and now I just want to be invisible. I liked myself much more before I got famous. I was much friendlier and had more energy."


Sia was singing in an acid-jazz band called Crisp by the time she was 17. In 1997 the group split and she decided to move to London to follow her first love, a boyfriend named Dan. Several weeks later, she was on a stopover in Thailand, on her way to join him, when she received the devastating news he had died in London after being hit by a car. Sia returned to Australia but soon after received a call from one of Dan's former housemates, inviting her to stay in London. She would spend more than a year living in the three-bedroom flat Dan had shared with 13 other Australians.

"I was hanging out with a bunch of kids, doing drugs and suffering," she recalls. "Then one day, a friend of my cousin's asked me to sing at a jam session."

At the session, a local music mogul ran to the stage as she belted out a Gwen McCrae soul classic and yelled at her "you're with me, you're with me".

"He managed me until I found out that he was actually a cocaine dealer," Sia says. "It was weird, there was a lot of celebrities around and I just thought he was well connected. Then I got a record deal."

Her debut album Healing is Difficult, released in 2000, dealt with the loss of Dan and was a minor hit in Britain, yielding a top-10 single, Taken for Gran-ted. She was embraced by the electronic-music community and recorded regularly with the credible British duo Zero 7.

Her second solo album, Colour the Small One, better showcased her stunning husky vocals but was poorly marketed and struggled to connect with a mainstream audience. Exasperated, she decided to make the move to New York.

Upon arriving in the US she received a massive, unexpected leg-up. Her extraordinary single Breathe Me was used to as the soundtrack to the final scene of the adored TV series Six Feet Under. Sia began touring the US "like bananas". Her third album, 2008's Some People Have Real Prob-lems, sold solidly and allowed her to develop a high-concept live show.

By the end of her last tour, she was selling out 2000-seat theatres nightly in the US and Britain. For the first time, her career had genuine momentum. Last year she gathered a collection of songs she deemed her most commercial and found the major labels still enthusiastic.

Four songs from her new album — The Codependent, Bring Night, Stop Trying and Cloud — are more than five years old. The rest of the album comes from co-writes with Greg Kurstin from US duo the Bird and the Bee, her bassist Sam Dixon and Dan Carey (Lily Allen).

"I've never been a 'priority' before," Sia says of signing with Sony. "This buzz doesn't just come because of a good song. It's marketing. Which is sick. This is a sick business. It's so sad. Knowing now what goes into making a successful artist, it's disheartening."

Still, Sia will play the game and play hard, as a one-time-only deal. She says she owes it to her management and her band, who have stuck by her for many lean years.

"I'm going to promote the shit out of this record," she says. "I'm seeing it as an investment. After this record I'll make records and I'll put them out but I will not promote or tour them. I'll just write pop songs for other people."

Still, Sia will play the game. She says she owes it to her management and her band, who have stuck by her for many lean years.

She had planned to "promote the shit out of this record", but on Friday when the album went on sale, she announced via Twitter that she has been diagnosed with Grave's disease - an autoimmune condition - and has cancelled all promotion activities.

After this record she plans to make records but not promote or tour them. "I'll just write pop songs for other people."Besides, Sia has a girlfriend, J. D. Samson, the androgynous singer in feminist electro-punk band Le Tigre, whom she wants to marry. She despairs her adopted city New York does not allow her to do this.

"We pay the same taxes but we don't get the same tax breaks as heterosexual married couples and we'd like that, so we're fighting for equal rights, I guess."

Sia was in relationships with men for most of her life before she met J. D., who, to her, looked just like a cute boy.

"We are in love and we want to have kids. We have four sperm donors that we have narrowed it down to."

Her plan of becoming a gun songwriter is already well in train. She has four songs on the new Christina Aguilera disc and one for Aguilera's upcoming film, Bur-lesque.

She has also written with Natasha Bedingfield, Will Young, Katie Noonan and Lior. And at the moment, she is trying to write songs for Britney Spears.

"People call me for the ballads," she says. "Apparently that's where I've been pigeonholed. But it's really interesting and really fun. It's my favourite part of the job, writing. Especially with other people."

Which, in itself, is just another of Sia's contradictions.

"This is an exhausting job and I don't really have any energy left over for my family and friends.


"That's why I'd rather do something different."

We Are Born is released today through Inertia.

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