I saw this interview with Sia on YouTube, and it showed how she writes songs, which I thought was fascinating. Basically, her partner plays some melody on the piano, and she just sings whatever comes to mind. They then discussed how they’ll write a song in a couple minutes, record a demo, and send it out to different artists. Apparently she wrote a song, “Pretty Hurts” for Katy Perry, but it got shuffled around to Beyonce.
Long story short, I stumbled onto the demo Sia recorded for “Perfume,” a song she wrote for Britney Spears. And, my mind is blown. It’s so raw, full of emotion, and just beautiful. Then I listened to the Britney Spears version and can’t believe it’s the same song. You know, I don’t like to be negative and criticize music, but Britney is not Sia. I don’t know whether it’s the over-synthed nature of Britney’s version or the fact she seems to be over-enounciating the words, but it just is not the perfection Sia’s is.
Sia’s version really demonstrates the raw pain of an unrequited love, and it certainly resonates within my heartstrings. Unfortunately, Britney’s doesn’t ring like that with me. Therefore, Sia’s version is #PhillipsSongOfTheDay, not Britney’s.
Again, I want to end on a positive note and say that I’m not here to say Britney Spears is an awful musician or anything, I just wanted to point of that Sia’s demo is simply sublime and I think she should have kept it for 1000 Forms of Fear, instead of selling it (incidentally, Sia apparently was going to sell “Chandelier” to Rihanna or Beyonce, but then she didn’t think either of them could understand the pain behind it, so she recorded it herself). You know, Sia should just release all her demos of the songs she wrote…like “Diamonds,” “Perfume,” “Pretty Hurts,” etc. so we can hear the original beauty within them.
