Sia Uplifts With “Alive”
Sia shared "Alive" today (September 24), the lead single from This Is Acting, her follow-up to 1000 Forms of Fear. If you loved the grand-scale spirit of "Chandelier" and "Elastic Heart," you'll likely love "Alive," too.
The song starts off with a somewhat morose-sounding chorus, describing hardship on a (presumably metaphorical) journey of mythological proportions. "I had a one-way ticket to the place where all the demons go," she sings, before building to a transcendent chorus and letting her voice off the leash altogether: "I'm still breathing, I'm aliiiiiive." Listen to "Alive" above.
Sia told RTV Slovenija (courtesy of Idolator) that “Alive” was co-written with Adele for the "Someone Like You" singer's next album, which is rumored for a November 30 release. But Adele's team rejected it at the last minute, so Sia lent her own vocals to their creation.
“It’s about [her] life, so now I sing the song from [her] perspective,” Sia told the site.
Sia says This Is Acting, her seventh studio album, is a collection of songs that she originally wrote for other artists, but have been rejected for any number of reasons. “I have these songs made and they have [been] rejected, but [they] seemed… good, so I kept [them for] myself.” Hey, there's plenty of Sia-penned songs that were made famous by other artists, yet she still does plenty of justice to herself (Rihanna's "Diamonds," for one).
The wig-loving pop star told reporters at the Venice Film Festival, “I’m calling it This Is Acting because they are songs I was writing for other people, so I didn’t go into it thinking, ‘This is something I would say’. It’s more like play-acting. It’s fun.”
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