19 year old Towson University student Stephon Smith isn’t a hipster. He isn’t a music nerd either. He’s a college student who happens to listen to the radio and follow popular trends. He’s the average “uninformed” listener who likely up until Pitbull began rapping over electro only knew Bmore club as the stuff they played on Friday night on 92Q in Bmore, and certainly had no idea who David Guetta was or even how to spell his name. Truth is, Smith represents the average American musical consumer, someone just not covered by the blogosphere, until now. TGRIOnline.com has decided to loose Smith, and his “uninformed” opinions on popular artists and musical styles that are all the rage in the underground we know and love. Today’s victim, art pop blog favorite Australian chanteuse Sia. I hope you all enjoy.
Finding the love of your dreams is the ultimate victory of humankind. Australia’s Sia Furler, whether as a contributor to jazz funk outfit Zero 7 or as a solo artist has always lent her voice to the solution of that quest. Her music is moody and intense, the journal entries of the quiet, awkward, emotional and artistic girl in the back of your high school classroom. That girl in a nutshell is Sia Furler. A soulful crooner who delves deep into her heart and mind for inspiration. Her music described as a combo of acid jazz and dance-pop. Her broken relationships, hopes of happiness, yearning for love, and sometimes creepy love of the partner she can’t have is the foundation of her music. The messages Sia expresses throughout her songs aren’t as complicated as other singers, which is to her credit. Having started my listening to her from the somewhat recent studio release entitled Colour The Small One (2004), the evolution to 2010’s excellent We Are Born, which finds her happy and in a relationship with Le Tigre’s JD Samson shows the victory of a career as body of work, the definition of Furler as an artist. It’s the journey that makes the artist, so we take the time today to revisit the development of Sia into the sensation she has become.
The music contained in her previous work appears to lack direction. The songs seem to equate to poetry written about her experiences rather than anything that is actually meant to be put into song form. There aren’t any fancy musical elements in the songs she produces on this album and your ears are likely to be graced with an acoustic guitar. Despite these setbacks, it’s a good primer for when better production for her music is finally incorporated on arguably her best release to date, 2008’s Some People Have Real Problems. The added production on the album allows her lyrics to have life and make the songs she creates to be more fully developed than her prior fare. Don’t get me wrong, songs like “Breathe Me”, “Don’t Bring Me Down” and “The Bully” are wonderful listens but they’re nothing special. With the added direction of Amy Winehouse’s producer Jimmy Hogarth, her music is able to finally shine.
Added percussion, string instruments, and backing vocals enhance her music. The themes haven’t changed, but the sound has and that’s to the benefit of her as an artist. “Some People Have Real Problems” has been her highest charted album release which isn’t any surprise. The production on songs like “The Girl You Lost To Cocaine”, “Day Too Soon”, “Death By Chocolate”, “Soon We’ll Be Found” and “You Have Been Loved” allow you to actually believe that Sia is an artist who could succeed in some manner. While the majority of the songs I just listed speak on her lost of love or yearning for love, the song “Death By Chocolate” offers an uplifting message which is contradictive of the song title but in lieu of this it’s an excellent song and the choir that kicks in at the 3:00 marks makes it so much better.
With all the praise I have given Sia in this article, there are some problems that I have with her music. Her phrasing is often unusual, which I don’t know to attribute to her accent or the way she enunciates sylabbles at the end of lines of songs. Also, at times her expression is seemingly not unique, as in my listening, I found her comparable to a multitude of others including Amy Winehouse, Shakira and Corinne Bailey Rae. One could attribute the Amy Winehouse sound solely to her working with Winehouse’s producer, but that’s neither here nor there.
Overall, I do enjoy some of Sia’s songs. Not all of her music is in my opinion worthy of constant replay but the ones I mentioned before as well as “Clap Your Hands”, “I Drink To Get Drunk”, “I’m In Here” and her last single to be release entitled “Pictures” off her Lady Croissant (2007) EP, are songs you should give a listen. Sia is a solid live performer, but I wouldn’t peg her to become the next big thing to come out on the music scene. If anything she’s probably one of those artists you have on your iPod that you know is good and is a pleasant voice to remember. But with her latest, she may finally be something more…
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