Sia Furler
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Sia Kate Isobelle Furler (pronounced ['siə]) (born December 18, 1975 in Adelaide, South Australia) is an Australian contemporary female pop singer, noted for her work with Zero 7 and her two major-label solo albums.
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[edit] Career
Sia Furler was part of the Australian acid jazz formation Crisp, which released an album entitled OnlySee on a now defunct independent record label.
Furler did not achieve commercial success until her move to the United Kingdom and embarking on a solo career. In 2000, Sia signed to the Sony Music sub-label, DancePool. She released her major-label debut, Healing Is Difficult, an eclectic mix of R&B and jazz. The album included the underground club hits "Drink To Get Drunk" (remixed by Different Gear) and "Little Man". It also featured the single "Taken For Granted", a song containing a Prokofiev sample. The single reached the Top 10 in the UK charts. Part of Sia's success can be attributed to the UK garage remix of 'Little Man' by Wookie. This remix was a huge club hit which led many people to discover her who otherwise would not have. This remix still provokes an incredible reaction from crowds in nightclubs up and down the country.
Healing Is Difficult received wide critical acclaim and led to Furler being hailed as the next Lauryn Hill or Nelly Furtado by certain sections of the music press. However, following record label conflicts, Sia left Sony Music and signed with Go! Beat Records, a subsidiary of UMG.
In 2003, Sia released the EP Don't Bring Me Down. Her second album, entitled Colour The Small One, was released in Australia and Europe the following year. The downtempo album saw Sia employ a mixture of acoustic instruments and electronic backing in her material, which led to comparisons with artists like Dido and Sarah McLachlan. The album spawned the singles "Breathe Me" and "Where I Belong". The latter track was earmarked to appear on the soundtrack of the film Spiderman 2, but owing to a record label conflict, its inclusion was withdrawn. The single's cover art featured Sia dressed in a Spiderman costume. Sia co-wrote the album track "The Bully" and two as-yet unreleased tracks, "Killing Kindness" and "Silence Them", with American musician, Beck.
In early 2005, Sia parted company with Go! Beat Records, disappointed at the company's poor promotion of the album, and the failure of the label's U.S. counterpart to pick up the record.
In 2005, "Breathe Me" was featured as the closing song in the series finale of the U.S. HBO television series Six Feet Under. The track, licensed to the Astralwerks record label, also appears on the second soundtrack album of the series, Six Feet Under, Vol. 2: Everything Ends. Following this, Astralwerks (also home to Röyksopp, Air and Fatboy Slim) licensed Sia's Colour The Small One album, which was finally given an American release in early 2006. Sia toured the U.S. throughout 2006, promoting the album and cross-promoting the Six Feet Under season five DVD release. The re-released 2006 US album features four bonus tracks, "Broken Biscuit" (from the Don't Bring Me Down EP), "Sea Shells" (the B-side to "Breathe Me" in the UK) and two remixes of "Breathe Me" by Four Tet and Ulrich Schnauss.
In addition to her solo career, Furler provides vocals for Zero 7, on their hit singles "Destiny" and "Distractions" from their debut album, Simple Things, and "Somersault" and "Speed Dial No. 2" from their second album, When It Falls. Zero 7's third album, The Garden, released May 2006, features another six songs with Furler on vocals. One of these, "You're My Flame" was released as a single in the UK, and is due for release the US on July 31, 2006.
Sia recorded a cover version of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android", which appeared on the 2006 tribute album, Exit Music: Songs with Radio Heads in 2006. The album also includes covers by artists such as Mark Ronson, Matthew Herbert and Cinematic Orchestra.
Sia has also recorded a duet with singer Katie Noonan, a member of Brisbane-based band George. The song is likely to appear on Noonan's solo album, due for release in 2007. Sia has also recorded an animated pop project called "The H Crusader", which has yet to be released. She has also been writing material for her new album, which won't be released until 2007, due to her promotional work for Colour The Small One and appearances with Zero 7.
In addition to this, her song Sunday was featured on an episode of the hit US show Greys Anatomy.
[edit] Trivia
- Sia is the niece of Men at Work frontman Colin Hay.
- Sia's song "Breathe Me" was first linked with the tv series, Six Feet Under when it was used on promos for the upcoming season. A version of the track was also played over the closing scenes of the series finale, extended to almost 7 minutes by the programme's sound editors.
- Her music video for "Breathe Me" uses 2,500 polaroids in flip-animation to reflect a desolate passage of solitude indoors in West London.
- In the Outback Australian adventure parody show All Aussie Adventures, the inept host Russell Coight visits a Cooktown pub. Whilst there, he intends to play a country and western track on the jukebox, but accidentally plays Sia's rather upbeat song, "Taken for Granted", eliciting odd looks from the pub regulars.
- Sia provided vocals for Australian dance outfit Friendly's debut single "Some Kind Of Love Song", released in 1999. It reached No. 45 on the ARIA chart.
[edit] Out Now
- "Pictures" (2006) - released digitally (iTunes) on 28 Nov
[edit] Out Soon
- "Lady Croissant - Live LP" (2007) - to be released 6th Feb
[edit] Discography
- Healing Is Difficult (2000)
- Don't Bring Me Down EP (2003)
- Colour the Small One (2004, 2006)
