Sia Furler has blazed the trail for a new kind of pop étoile, star - Telegraph 

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The 39-year-old Australian singer-songwriter, recently named in Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour Power List, shuns public fame in favour of personal truth

Sia Furler: "I don’t want to be followed by the paparazzi”  Photo: Rex Features

Taylor Swift may have taken on Apple and Spotify and Katy Perry may have earned the most money out of any female pop star last year, but the inclusion of Sia Furler in the top ten of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour Power List recognises her more subtle but none the less radical form of achievement. In an industry that considers women\'s bodies as part of the product, the 39-year-old Australian singer-songwriter took a cool stance when she opted in 2014 to hide her face behind a choppy blonde wig and remain physically anonymous when she performed, staking her fortune on the power of her songs alone.

Born in Adelaide, Furler had successfully sang without the wig for over a decade from the mid Nineties (both as a solo artist and as the lead vocalist with British trip-hop band Zero 7) when she decided to step out of the spotlight. She continued to work behind the scenes, creating music for TV soundtracks, most memorably the song Breathe Me featured in the final episode of Six Feet Under, and penning hits for a galaxy of stars including: Madonna, Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Maroon 5 and Flo Rider. As part of their inner circle, she undoubtedly saw the effect that 24/7 media scrutiny was having on them and expressed her frustration on the 2013 song Pretty Hurts which she co-wrote for Beyonce. “Shine the light on whatever’s worse/ Perfection is the disease of a nation/ Pretty hurts.”

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When she decided to relaunch her solo career – following rave reviews of her vocals on David Guetta’s 2011 hit Titanium which had been released without her permission – she decided she wasn’t going put herself through the torment of celebrity.

“I had the idea that, well, if Amy Winehouse had been the bouffant, maybe I was the blond bob.” she says. “I would like not to be picked apart or for people to observe when I put on ten pounds or take off ten pounds or I have a hair extension out of place or my fake tan is botched … Most people don’t have to be under that pressure, and I’d like to be one of them. I don’t want to be followed by the paparazzi.”

She has also said that she hopes to continue making pop music for another 20 years and thinks the anonymity will extend her “expiration date” in a field where older women are shunted from the shelves.

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Over recent years, Furler has taken a similarly strategic approach to her art, standing back and analysing the trends of the moment to isolate the components of a hit song. Her 2014 album, 1000 Forms of Fear, saw her showcase the formula she’d developed working for others. She’d figured out that you need to take one evocative word – “umbrella,” say, or “firework” – and spin it into a three-minute metaphor, with some added musical whoosh, designed to take the singer on a journey from “victim to victor”. It was a personal narrative with which she identified – having struggled with addiction and mental illness for many years following the death of her boyfriend the late Nineties.

A clever range of textures (from raw cello through stuttering piano to popcorn-light synths) keep things interesting and there’s a real bravery in her vocals that I doubt she’d achieve were she more personally exposed. Songs like Chandelier, Elastic Heart and Cellophane are so efficient in extracting a visceral reaction when you listen to them that at times it feels like Furler presses our emotional buttons with cynical ease. But she’s really a smart woman who just found the perfect medium for her truth.

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