SIA.

Anyone who only knows the wig misses the biggest part of Sia’s story. Before she filled arenas without showing her face, she already had a turbulent career behind her: a band in Australia, a virtually lost first album, years in London, vocals with Zero 7, a cult classic rediscovered by a television series, and a period when she preferred writing songs for others. It was precisely from these detours that her radical answer to fame emerged: the voice central, the person out of the picture.

Sia often positions the voice as the engine of a song. Her singing can sound gritty, fragile, and then overwhelming, while the production gives the melody a big stage. The recognizable chorus is only part of the story: the tension in the verses makes the outburst convincing. Pop and personal emotion remain closely intertwined.

Reasonable Woman serves as an entry point into her album world. Listening to Sia on vinyl gives the various arrangements more room than a series of standalone singles. A LP demonstrates how the production supports the voice and how the alternation between restrained passages and larger choruses can create a longer arc of tension.

A vinyl album gives the songs a fixed order and a tangible place in your collection. Give the lesser-known tracks time as well, and follow the transitions within a side of the record.

Sia Kate Isobelle Furler was born on December 18, 1975, in Adelaide. Art and music were close at hand; her parents moved in a creative environment, and a wide variety of soul, pop, and jazz could be heard at home. As a young singer, Sia joined Crisp, a local acid jazz band. There, she learned not how to write a perfect pop song, but how to use a voice as an instrument: gritty, agile, and sometimes deliberately unpredictable.

In 1997, her first solo album, OnlySee, was released. The record was released on a small scale and barely reached an audience outside Australia. In retrospect, that debut sounds like a sketchbook. The powerful soars and broken edge in her voice are already present, but the artist who would later reach millions of listeners does not yet exist in a recognizable form. Sia was not traveling along a straight path. She had to get lost first.

Read more in the Artist Story. Also explore the genre stories: pop · synthpop.