Sia - The J Files | Double J 

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Sia has become a bona fide pop superstar in recent years, but her origins are far more humble than that of most pop stars.

Her first solo album was released in 1997 and she has worked tirelessly as a singer and songwriter ever since. She spent years in the UK working as a vocalist for trip hop group Zero 7 before moving to the US, where she cracked the charts writing for artists like Christina Aguilera, Eminem and David Guetta as well as with her own music. Throughout this long and increasingly illustrious career, Sia has had a chequered relationship with the press, fame and the music industry at large. But now she does things on her own terms and her career is all the stronger for it.

Join Linda Marigliano as she covers every aspect of Sia\'s fascinating career on The J Files, Thursday 14 May from 8pm.

Sia Furler\'s first days after leaving Australia were horrible. After her acid jazz band Crisp broke up, and her debut solo album

was released, she decided it was time to travel. Like so many 22-year-old Australians, she set off to the UK to catch up with her boyfriend.

"I went over there to have a holiday, really," she told triple j\'s Nicole Fossati and Costa Zouliou in 2002. "I went to meet up with a friend, we were going to go travelling through the UK. Instead, the week before I was supposed to arrive, he was hit and killed on Kensington High Street by a black taxi."

received much attention in Australia and, at first, Sia’s first priority in the UK was emotional recovery and grieving by way of drinking.

"I moved in with 13 Australians in a three bedroom apartment in Shepherd\'s Bush and we got drunk, really. We got drunk for a long time. We were all sort of grieving in our own special, unique ways."

But people wanted to see her back on stage, so she struck a deal.

"It was a bit of a rescue mission really," she said. "I\'ve got two British cousins and one of their friends rang up and said \'aren\'t you a singer? Why aren\'t you singing?\' And I said \'I\'m a bit busy being an alcoholic\'. He said \'You don\'t have any money, do you?\' I said no, and he said \'Come to this jam, I\'ll pick you up and I\'ll buy you beers. You\'re gonna get up and sing and you\'re gonna be great\'.

"He said \'Come to this jam, I\'ll pick you up and I\'ll buy you beers. You\'re gonna get up and sing and you\'re gonna be great\'."

"So I got up and I sang and it was a beautiful moment. There were hands in the air. There was a guy running backwards and forwards in front of the stage going \'You\'re with me! You\'re with me!\' He ended up managing me for the next three years."

In 2000, Sia broke through to the UK mainstream with her single \'Taken for Granted\'. The trip hop track reached the UK top ten and landed her a spot on

. In Australia the song didn\'t manage to get past number 100, two years after its UK release. This trend of international success and relative obscurity at home would continue for years.

didn\'t get an Australian release until a year after it initially came out in the UK. As the title suggests, she\'d written the bulk of the album in the wake of her partner\'s death. The album had limited success in all territories, not quite living up to the promise of its first single. But Sia had momentum.

She joined UK trip hop group Zero 7 as a vocalist and sang on their first four albums. A number of the tracks – \'Destiny\', \'Distractions\', \'Somersault\' and \'Throw It All Away\' – charted highly and the second and third albums,

All the while Sia continued to write songs for herself. She was unsatisfied with how Sony Music promoted

and so she sought out a new label. Luckily, there was considerable interest.

"I\'m quite successful [in the UK]," she told Fossati and Zouliou in 2002. "The record companies are after me. It\'s been really good. There\'s been a bidding war on, which is the fantasy"

in 2004. While the critics rather liked it, the album didn\'t sell spectacularly and Sia was once again denied a jolt into the pop stratosphere. It did, however, produce \'Breathe Me\', which would become an important song in getting her to the next level of success.

Hottest 100, and featured in the finale of the acclaimed HBO drama series

, which was watched by millions and considered by many to be one of the best television episodes in the history of TV.

It\'s a beautiful song used in a poignant moment and the series creator said that he intentionally wrote the scene with \'Breathe Me\' in mind.

"I wrote the scene to fit that song, with that music in mind," series creator, writer and director Alan Ball told Vulture. "I didn’t, like, time out each shot to the song, because you can’t do that. But every shot was pretty specific. It’s not like we shot tons and tons of film and whittled it down to these seven minutes. We knew what we wanted those seven minutes to be."

was an enormous break for Sia, but it was also partly responsible for delaying her breakthrough album as the singer moved to Los Angeles.

"I lived in London for eight years, then I moved to the countryside in West Sussex for one year. I moved to LA temporarily to do a lot of writing for [2008\'s]

and I loved it," she told Caz Tran on triple j in 2008.

"It was so awesome. I was kind of remorseful that I\'d spent eight years in London. I got to LA and the quality of life was so good. The food was so good and the people were so nice and the entertainment industry was like a five minute drive away. Hiking was like five minutes away. Suddenly I\'d rescued a couple of dogs and I was like \'I live here now\'."

Sia performs at Homebake in Sydney, 2009. Photo: Jacqui Mitchell /

and enjoyed better chart success than ever before. But she already had another album ready that she really wanted to release. She just couldn\'t find anyone to agree that she should.

"I\'ve been trying to put this record out for maybe five years," she told triple j\'s Richard Kingsmill in 2010. "I\'ve been collecting all these songs along the way and they\'ve been too pop for whatever record label I was with. Even my management thought it would be a bad a career move."

The record\'s delay wasn\'t for Sia’s lack of trying. She put everything on the line to convince her label to let her take this new, pop-centred direction.

"I wrote the majority of the record with Greg Kurstin about five years ago and delivered it to Universal right after I made

. They said \'you can\'t do this. This is career suicide. You\'d be totally sabotaging your career. You need to make another down tempo album.\' I stubbornly said \'this is what I\'m delivering\' and they said \'Well, you\'re dropped\'."

"They dropped me and two weeks later, without anyone knowing, \'Breathe Me\' was in the finale of

and I talked to everyone else I knew in the industry and they agreed with Universal. So I realised I\'d better make another fucking down tempo album, so I made

– that was really in order for me to be able to make this album."

Nobody thought that I could succeed as a viable commercial success.

Being pigeonholed as an artist who only makes slow, dour music was particularly painful for Sia.

"Nobody thought that I could succeed as a viable commercial success. It was really depressing, because this was an album I was really proud of and it was really fun. And I was in a better mood.

was a really difficult time for me. I wanted to make a record that said \'things can be better\'. To have people identify for the most part with your fragile self state, it can get you down."

get Sia into the pointy end of charts around the world, it made her a hugely desirable songwriter for other artists. Beyoncé, Flo Rida, Rihanna, Eminem, David Guetta and Christina Aguilera are just a few artists who have benefited from her skills in recent years.

placement, another Sia song had another enormous placement a few years later. As she explained, it was rather fortuitous.

"I was given a brief for a Will Smith movie called

which didn\'t do well. I flew to Los Angeles and we watched the movie in this funny little screening theatre and went home and wrote two songs: one was called \'Never Gonna Leave Me\', which ended up on

, which was rejected from the Will Smith movie. Then we wrote \'My Love\', which was also rejected from the Will Smith movie but ended up on the

soundtrack. So in that case it\'s ironic that a reject from one movie got placed in frankly a much bigger film."

"I don't value fame as much as I value my relationships with the people in my real life."

Double J hasn\'t spoken to Sia for this article and show, because she chooses not to engage with the media anymore. She also doesn\'t want to tour. It\'s not surprising. She\'s been threatening to turn her back on publicity and fame for years.

"I can\'t keep touring and I can\'t do any more promo unless something is resolved in my psychiatric care," she told Kingsmill. "I feel so drained psychologically answering the same questions all day and touring and being away from my dogs. I\'m 34 and I want to have a baby and I guess I don\'t need to do this anymore.

"If I can write songs for other people, it\'s really a much easier job than being the artist. Most people would think \'why would you not want to be famous\' and the reason is because fame is disgusting, it ruins you and it\'s psychologically damaging. It\'s bad for your self esteem, especially if you accidentally see things written about you or see pictures of you in the worst dressed list. Even if you\'re sandwiched between Cher and Padma Lakshmi.

"I don\'t value it as much as I value my relationships with the people in my real life. I want to keep singing and keep making records but I won\'t tour and promote them.

"Maybe I\'ll change my mind. I guess what I\'m trying to do right now is what some people might call self sabotage."

As far back as 2002, Sia was tired of what the media were saying about her and wanted to glean from her success.

had done some research into me being a lezzy and that\'s what she wanted to talk about for the entire duration of the interview," said Sia – who is now married and identifies as "flexible" sexually. "Or, had I screwed any celebrities and did they have big dongs? I had one today that was \'Describe yourself\', so I said \'I\'m yellow and furry\'. \'What\'s your strength as an artist?\' And I said \'My wanking finger. Don\'t ask me that ever again\'."

She has also shied away from showing her face on album covers, film clips, TV appearances, magazine covers and at all, really. Sia flirted with anonymity in the very early days of her career – she appears, uncredited, as the lead vocalist on the song \'Some Kind Of Love\' by Australian electronic artist Friendly.

"With that Friendly track, one of the reasons I was shy about anyone knowing it was me was ‘cos I felt embarrassed about having those emotions and about everyone knowing them," she told triple j in 2002.

"When that became successful, that was kind of empowering. It was probably one of the most important things to happen, because it made me want to write more honestly. To know that all of that\'s acceptable. That\'s what I do – that\'s my therapy. The rest of the time I\'m really good fun and happy."

Sia wins Songwriter of the Year for a record third year running