Album of the Week - This is Acting by Sia: pop without pretence

What an amazing story Sia Kate Isobelle Furler has to tell. The 40-year-old Australian singer and songwriter – perhaps best known in some quarters for hiding her face on television shows and red carpets – has been pitching her work for more than 20 years.

The niece of Colin Hay (from the Australian pop band Men at Work), Sia moved to London in 1997, where she worked as background vocalist for Jamiroquai and then lead vocalist for Zero 7.

From then to now it has been steadily uphill – the past six years in particular has seen due diligence pay off, with Sia initially transforming from a successful recording artist into a highly paid songwriter for hire (and then back again to selling bucket loads).

Artists such as Beyoncé, Rihanna, Alicia Keyes, Britney Spears, Kylie, Rita Ora, Christine Aguilera and Celine Dion (to name a mere eight) have benefitted from Sia's solid gold songwriting touches, and This is Acting will only add to the pile. Not just yet, though – the album is so titled because most of the songs were written for other people, but were either not used or rejected for various reasons.

It's difficult to believe that tunes such as Birds Set Free and Alive (both of which were written specifically for Adele and Rihanna) failed any kind of litmus test, as both exude the kind of modern pop chutzpah that any singer/performer (established or emerging) would gratefully accept.

Not to worry – One Million Bullets wasn't handed over for anyone to say no to, and in Sia's hands it's a massive hit that we'll be hearing for months to come. Ditto Cheap Thrills and Reaper (two more Rihanna rejects, the latter co-written with Kanye West) and Footprints (Beyoncé says no!), each of which amount to little more than contemporary pop blueprints.

If there's a downside it's that the songs aren't necessarily emotionally connected to the songwriter, but they're of such high quality they are – to use an appropriate album track title – Unstoppable.

A soundtrack to summer if ever there was one.

[ siamusic.net ]