Words With: Sia

Sia Furler might not be an instantly recognisable household name, but having sold out a recent UK tour, and ahead of her fourth solo album, she’s working on it. Your typical antipodean, she’s loud, random, full of energy and bags of fun and Gigwise just couldn’t resist the invitation to meet the Australian songstress in person to chat about her life and career to date.

Sia’s been involved with music for over a decade and has arguably had more lows than highs, so it’s only fair to start at the beginning.  Her first foray into the industry came more by chance than planning, discovering her voice in a karaoke bar whilst taking a university gap year, as she readily explains: “I got up and sang at this karaoke bar in Italy. I didn’t like any of the songs they had so I just got them to clap their hands and sang ‘Lean On Me’ by Bill Withers.” Admittedly unless you’re an X Factor contestant, it’s not your average casting session, but it was enough to be offered the chance to record a song by a local DJ who happened to be in the bar. Fourteen years on and it all seems rather distant and amusing, as Sia recounts holding back the laughter: “I was seventeen and writing about racism and homophobia, I had a message and wanted to change the world. Then I went back to university in Adelaide to finish studying Italian and Politics and I hated it after having spent a year out of school, so I quit straight away.”

School out and another chance encounter soon after, this time with an ex-boyfriend, led to the formation of “A really unsuccessfully band called Crisp”. Success not forthcoming, the urge to travel once again became too much and Sia left Adelaide for Japan, but she wasn’t letting go of her desire to become a singer as she explains: “I went to Tokyo and worked as a hostess for a while. In the interim I’d made a solo record called ‘Only See’ which is like the worst trip-hop shit you’ll ever hear. I had a box of thirty in the hostess bar where I was working and somehow I managed to engineer that I would get up in the centre of the bar in some sort of Courtney Love lace negligee and 1940’s heels, hold onto the strippers pole and sing my songs while they were being played over the CD. I only had thirty and I sold out!”

Having had her fun in the East, Sia decided to make her way to London, to meet her first true love, Dan, via a trip to Thailand; “We’d split up but we were going to get back together and travel. I was five days into my stay in Thailand and I got this call from my mum and I knew that someone had died.” Tragically her instincts were right. “Dan had been hit by a taxi on Kensington High Street. I went back to his funeral in Adelaide and his friends in London were so nice, they rang me and said we know you’ve got a ticket here, come anyway and stay with us. So I came and there was like thirteen of us in a three-bedroom apartment and we were all grieving and we all got drunk for a ****ing long time.”

Although not ideal circumstances by any stretch of the imagination, Sia had made it to London; a few low key gigs later and a record deal followed, although now several years the wiser, it wasn’t necessarily the best deal, as she fondly recounts: “It turns out that their main gig was coke dealing and I suddenly thought **** I’m managing them. I’d got a hit with ‘Taken For Granted’ off the first album, but by this time I’d flopped because they didn’t release the album till six months after I’d had the hit. The one thing that came from that guy managing me was that he played football with Sam and Henry from Zero 7. They gave me two tracks to write over and they were ‘Destiny’ and ‘Distractions’. Then I left and a year later I’d forgotten all about it and my career was over… then the Zero 7 album came out and it got a bit successful…resuscitation number one!”

Another solo album, ‘Colour The Small One’ followed, as did widespread acclaim for her ongoing work with Zero 7, but despite the whispered success, it wasn’t all going her way: “Colour The Small One was a painful period cos I’d finally got emotionally full up. I stopped drinking, I got therapy, was really depressed and just had to address lots of shit” she says rather matter of factly. Despite the emotional strain that ‘Colour The Small One’ was written under, Sia thought she was onto a good thing, but Island thought otherwise and promptly dropped her: “They said I was a down tempo artist and that I’d be confusing the fans…I was like what fans?” Say’s Sia, still rather bemused. But resuscitation number two was just around the corner and with her track ‘Breathe Me’, being featured on the final episode of Six Feet Under, her vocal talents were once again brought to public attention, and provided a new platform to work from: “I moved to LA, fell in love with LA and just accumulated all these songs, gave them to Jimmy (Hogarth, known for his work with Corinne Bailey Rae, James Morrison and Amy Winehouse) to produce, he picked eighteen he thought were the best, we ended up recording sixteen of them, picked thirteen and that’s how it all happened!”