Sia onlysee album blog11/9/2022 ![]() ![]() “Eye of the Needle” invites us to smile through the pain with another surging chorus. Thematically, “Burn the Pages” is similar to “Chandelier”-“we’re letting go tonight,” “burn the pages let ‘em go”-extolling the cathartic possibilities of forgetting the past, but without “Chandelier”’s heartrending melody. We’re thrown into a different state of being as soon as the drum machine kicks in-it’s almost flippant, the steady electro-pop rhythm teasing us into believing that it’s not all bad. “Burn the Pages” is the first indication that the album has the capacity to be upbeat. Again, we’re confronted with the agency of sadness: in more casual terms, it’s her party and she’ll cry if she wants to. Towards the song’s finale, Sia sings “I wake up” thirteen times in a row, a heartbreaking requiem for the dream life. ![]() Sia adjusts the tone of the adage, insisting that “big girls cry when their hearts are breaking.” There is no shame, the song suggests, in allowing your emotions to perform themselves. The title of “Big Girls Cry” is a kiss-off to The Four Seasons’ lyric girlfriend of 1962 (or perhaps to Fergie’s 2006 insistence that “Big Girls Don’t Cry”). However, while the lyrics express agency, the melancholic instrumentals suggest plaintiveness rather than confidence. The album’s anthemic opener, “Chandelier,” proclaims that “party girls don’t get hurt,” “I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist,” and the titular “I’m gonna swing from the chandelier.” In the entire album, this song conveys the most instrumentality both in its lyrics and in the epic swell of its song structure. ![]() What we want-and what Sia seems to want in 1000 Forms of Fear-is to have agency in our own sadness. Just because melancholia can be fetishized doesn’t mean it’s not real and relatable. As a culture, we have a fetish for female brokenness (to paraphrase author Stacey D’Erasmo), and it makes sense that we eat this kind of music up. Sia is part of a sad-girl songwriting tradition that’s captivated audiences for decades if not centuries, a tradition whose sirens range from Dinah Washington to Marianne Faithfull to Fiona Apple and Lana Del Rey. Since her 1997 Australian debut OnlySee, she’s written and co-written hit after hit with the likes of Flo Rida, Britney Spears, and Beyoncé, in addition to writing and recording her own music. Sia is a songwriting powerhouse of addictive downtempo electro-pop. ![]()
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