YouTube phenomenon, internationally renowned, Grammy nominated singer, introvert, extravert and all-round psychotherapist’s dream, Sia Furler is many things, but first and foremost she’s a remarkable and unique artist. With her emotive vocal performances and captivating song writing, the Australian born former Londoner, who after a brief stint in LA now calls New York home, has spent the last few years steadily making bigger and bigger waves in the US. Earning a word of mouth reputation as a ‘must see’ live act, her deeply seductive brand of dysfunction has seen her quietly collect a legion of dedicated fans including an enviable number of A-list luminaries. Add the fact that her shudderingly beautiful ‘Breathe Me’ was chosen to soundtrack the climax of hit TV series ‘Six Feet Under’ and that obsessive fans are now flooding the internet with their own versions of her face mangling ‘Buttons’ video after celebrity blogger Perez Hilton helped make it the second most watched music video in YouTube history, and it’s clear that Sia’s star is most definitely on the rise. Yet, as she herself points out, three albums into her career, the success universally predicted for her, has been a long time coming.“It’s ridiculous,” she laughs with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for when someone falls over in the street. “After all these years of trying, the second I stopped worrying about being a success, I got successful. It’s like how I stopped worrying about being a cool and credible artist. I realised that I’m a credible person and that I don’t care what demographic I appeal to anymore. And of course as soon as I stopped trying I suddenly became cool and credible and started attracting all these really cool people like Kirsten [Dunst], Ryan [Gosling] and Beck, who are just the most amazingly talented and cool people. It’s fucking insane.”Sia’s disarming and at times shockingly honest humour, along with her ability to laugh like a drain at just about anything, belies an altogether more painful part of her personal history, one which has informed so much of her tender and fragile music. Though still best known outside of the US as the jazz-slurring voice of Zero 7’s three albums, including 2001’s Mercury shortlisted ‘Simple Things’ and 2006’s Grammy Nominated ‘The Garden’, her long journey to cool credibility began with her ‘bohemian’ (and that’s putting it politely) childhood. Growing up on what she describes as “the hippiest street in Australia”, she first sang in her parents’ rockabilly band, The Soda Jerks, before joining jazz-funk band Crisp at 17. “We thought we were really cutting edge,” she sniggers with a roll of her eyes. “But we were trying way too hard.”After three years fronting Crisp, Sia packed her bags, bought an open-ended, round the world plane ticket and went in search of her fame and fortune. Eventually she would settle in London, have a Top 10 hit with her first single, the Prokofiev sampling ‘Taken For Granted’, and in 2001 release her critically acclaimed, R&B inflected debut album, ‘Healing Is Difficult’. However, a week before first arriving in London tragedy struck when the man she describes as her ‘first true love’ was run over and killed by a black cab on Kensington High Street.“Nearly everything on the first album was about that,” she says with uncharacteristic care. “I was pretty fucked up when Dan died. I couldn’t really feel anything and as a result ‘Healing Is Difficult’ was a very deflective album. It was me not dealing with stuff. The second album, ‘Colour The Small One’ was the opposite. I’d bottled all this stuff up and there was nowhere else for it to go, I had to get it out and deal with it. Honestly, I was totally suicidal. It was awful.” ...more