Sia reveals Katy Perry songwriting clash of styles: 'It feels like the enemy of creativity'
She quit their songwriting session after only an hour together.
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Your support makes all the difference.Sia has revealed how a creative clash led to her end a songwriting session with Katy Perry after just one hour.
In an interview with Rolling Stone on her history of writing for music's biggest hitters, the artist spoke of the many intricacies of melding styles and adjusting for differing methods of production. Though her track "Chandelier" secured her own individual success on stage, she was also behind Rihanna's gargantuan hit "Diamonds" amongst others.
Other times, however, things just don't work out so ideally. Describing her creative session with Perry, Sia said, "That's what was interesting about writing with Katy Perry because, again, it's her voice at the end of the day. She's also quite dominant and she's extremely analytical. I actually quit within the first hour of our session. I was like, 'Can we both agree this doesn't work? Like our whole songwriting dynamic?'"
"And she was like, 'I love it. It's like a puzzle to me. It's like a crossword.' And I was like, 'But this is boring for me. The analysis is totally boring. It feels like the enemy of creativity.' It was so cool to be able to have that conversation on why we wrote in such entirely different ways. I'm glad I didn't give up on it because I actually did get a song out of it, and we also really had a laugh because we were able to be authentic."
The song she's referencing is "Double Rainbow", which appears on Perry's last album Prism.
The interview arrives as part of her promotion for This is Acting, a collection of songs originally intended for use by other artists. For example, tracks "Reaper" and "Cheap Thrills" were both penned for Rihanna; with Kanye West actually sharing writing credit on the former. "Alive" was meant for Adele, though Sia believes its rejection had something to do with it being "too much my voice and not enough hers."
The singer also spoke about working with Beyoncé, whose "process is like a writing camp, essentially. She flies us all in and puts us all up. We all live in a house together — like five producers and five topline writers. She visits each room and will contribute and let us know what she's feeling and what she's not feeling. Lyrically, melodically, anything. She's very Frankenstein when she comes to songs."
This is Acting is set for release on 29 January.
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