Sia
Sia Furler grew up in Adelaide and cut her teeth in the mid-1990s Australian acid-jazz band Crisp before moving to London, where she sang backing vocals for Jamiroquai and became the ethereal downtempo voice of Zero 7. Her early solo work leaned on trip-hop, jazz, and soul, and after a decade as an in-demand songwriter for other pop stars she broke through as a reluctant star in her own right with 2014's 'Chandelier,' hiding her face behind oversized wigs while unleashing a cracked, powerhouse belt. Her run of 2010s singles reframed mainstream pop around raw vocal athleticism and a deliberately anonymous, anti-celebrity persona.
By her own account Sia taught herself to sing as a child by mimicking other vocalists, and she has named Aretha Franklin among those early models; the gospel-rooted power and dynamic control of Franklin's soul belting is the clearest inheritance in Sia's voice.
listen forCue Franklin's slow bloom on '(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman' — the way she opens hushed and lets the voice swell into a full-throated, gospel-sized release — then play 'Chandelier': same architecture, the fragile verse detonating into that cracked, belted chorus.
Sia has cited Stevie Wonder among the singers she imitated to teach herself to sing and has recalled a formative childhood meeting with him; you hear his legacy in her agile, run-heavy melodic phrasing and her habit of bending a melody rather than singing it straight.
listen forListen to the playful, melismatic vocal runs Wonder scatters through 'I Wish,' then the leaping, syllable-crammed hook of 'Elastic Heart' — both singers treat the top line as something to embellish and ricochet around rather than land on cleanly.
Among the voices Sia has said she mimicked as a child is Sting, whose most widely-heard singing came fronting The Police; their reggae-inflected pop and high, plaintive lead lines surface in Sia's lighter, offbeat-driven material.
listen forPlay The Police's 'Roxanne,' with its lurching reggae-tango lilt and Sting's keening upper-register hook, against 'Cheap Thrills': the same buoyant offbeat bounce and bright, plaintive vocal riding a Caribbean-tinged groove — pushed further here by Sean Paul's dancehall toast.