After so many years working in the record industry – watching and commenting on trends, watching the rise and fall of stars and their meteoric egos – it has become very easy to forget that, while the music business is a business, everyone got started in it because it was fun. For the performers, making music was fun; it was fun for everyone else too but, eventually, people started watching the bottom line and everything started getting serious. Looked at that way, this leisure begins to feel very sad, somehow.
That's why the music industry needs singers like Sia.
On her new album, We Are Born, singer Sia Furler remembers the fun that making music is supposed to be; even when she's addressing unhappy moments and memories, it's immediately followed by a very happy device (most often an almost childlike and innocent instrumental turn and melodic phrase) that totally diffuses or negates the dark side of everything.
It's clear in listening to the record that the Sia's sunny world view isn't at all put on; from the very beginning of “The Fight,” the singer seems intent on shaking and and all listeners out of whatever funk they might be in and giving them simple things to smile about. With some big, electronic beats for assistance, Sia lifts listeners up with sunny sentiments and is undoubtedly glad to do it (check out lines like “We made it through the darkness to the light/Uh huh we fought/But still we won the fight/Oh yes, we stand to gain love”) but, while listeners might not notice it, there is a bit of subversion deep below the surface here.
“What do you mean,” you ask, “it's pop – how subversive could it be?”
That's the gag – almost unnoticed in the chorus, Sia has lifted a piano lick from and Eels song and totally re-contextualized it with some disco gloss. The first time it happens here, it could be taken as coincidence; but when it keeps happening throughout the record, one has to wonder and, eventually, it becomes clear that Sia is successfully connecting some of the dots throughout modern rock and pop and throwing some sunlight into every corner.
That sun, combined with the different sources that Sia is working with, proves to be pretty infectious too; even the saddest sacks will feel a weight lifted from them as songs like “Clap Your Hands,” “Stop Trying” (which modifies both “The Love Cats” by The Cure and “Walking On Sunshine” by Kimberly Rew), “You've Changed” (which grabs some guitar tones from The Killers) and the “togetherness anthem” “Never Gonna Leave Me” (which borrows motifs from The Strokes) present consistent streams of up-tempo brightness that's impossible to deny or find fault with; and that those snippets of recognizable riffs and motifs by other artists are present only makes the songs more accessible to those that would normally scoff at the idea of any pop having any validity at all. In that way, Sia has created a music of universal appeal by intermingling disciplines no one thought could co-exist before which is both innovative and thought provoking on its' own, but made all the better by the fact that We Are Born is so accessible. Resistance is futile; even if you can't find any value in pop, you'll dig We Are Born when you hear it.
Artist:
www.siamusic.net/
www.myspace.com/siamusic
Album:
We Are Born is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
