Her fans include Kirsten Dunst, Ryan Gosling and collaborator Beck, but Adelaide-born singer/songwriter and Grammy nominee Sia Furler is as grounded as they come. Adam Bub speaks with the rising star.
 
Australian singer-songwriter Sia Furler is one intriguing personality. Take a song like ‘Academia’, where she duets playfully with singer Beck about the mathematical possibilities of love (“You can be my alphabet and I will be your calculator, and together we’ll work out on the escalator”), the game undercut by a haunting cacophony of clarinets, flutes, whistles and accordions. It’s this unusual combination of the heartfelt and the quirky that makes Sia the real deal – and the world is catching on.

Her third album, Some People Have Real Problems, reaches our shores this month after its huge success in the US. “I guess I just keep making them in the hope that I will make a living, and luckily it’s happening,” she tells AXN.

Now living in New York, 32-year-old Sia has carved out a successful music career overseas ever since her torch song ‘Breathe Me’ closed the final episode of TV series Six Feet Under (it reappeared recently in a Coca-Cola Olympic ad campaign). By 2007, her band Zero 7 found their album The Garden nominated for a Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance Album, while her solo work continued to garner accolades. But it was her face-mangling video clip for ‘Buttons’ that brought her into millions of households when celebrity blogger Perez Hilton gave the clip the thumbs up. It became the second most watched music video in YouTube history.

“It’s done me no disservice,” she says of the clip’s popularity. “If kids are smart, then music won’t lose its value and the product won’t be diluted, and if we learn to make sure that the artist can still work out how to make a living from their work and use it as a marketing tool, I think it’s brilliant.”

It’s a far cry from her days growing up in what she calls ‘hippy town’ near the North Adelaide Art School, living amidst musicians, actors and artists, including Loene Carmen (The Year My Voice Broke) and Imogen Annesley (Playing Beatie Bow). “My favourite was the little girl who moved in when she was six – I was eight or nine – her name was Mickey. She used to let me dress her up as Robert Smith from The Cure. She let me powder her face white, put crazy red lipstick on her and crimp her hair, and then we would do The Cure plays,” she laughs.

“Our gang was really fun while growing up.”

During these years, Sia came to love all kinds of music from Madonna to The Doors to Mariah Carey. “I love pop music,” she admits.

“But my taste has developed differently – I like more guts in the voice – I liked Mariah when she was doing Vision of Love, and now I’m not as into the whispery vocal,” she reveals. Her favourite voices now include Jeff Buckley, Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse, K.D. Lang, Lior and Katie Noonan.

It has been a long road to success for the Aussie expat. Sia spent eight years searching for fame in London – and tragedy struck before her arrival when her first love, Dan, was hit by a taxi and killed.

She admits that her R’n’B-infused debut album, Healing is Difficult, deflected this pain, while her second album, Colour the Small One, better reflected her fragile emotional state. After drug and alcohol problems, Sia bounced back while touring the US, and eventually moved to Los Angeles, and then New York. While her profile continues to skyrocket, she remains grounded and open about her personal life – including her bisexuality.

“If you lie about things and people find out later that you lied, the thing that you lied about becomes a potentially shameful subject for people who relate to it, and I don’t want to create shame for anyone,” she says.

“The beauty of life is that we have choices and we’re free to love. With respect to my sexuality, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with loving anyone. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re smart, sexy, funny, you’re in with a chance. I don’t care if you’ve got a ding or a dong, or neither or both! I fall in love with a person.”

Sia Furler’s Some People Have Real Problems is out on October 4.