Want Some Face Time With Kanye West and Rihanna? So Did Their Songwriter, Sia!

Sia (Photo: Getty Images)

Leave it to Sia to not put a pretty bow — you know, like the one she often wears to hide her face — on what it’s like to work with some of the biggest names in the music business.

The “Chandelier” singer, who’s also penned tracks such as Rihanna’s “Diamonds” and Beyoncé’s powerful “Pretty Hurts,” among many others, speaks about her new album in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. Next month's This Is Acting is full of songs that Sia’s A-List clients rejected.

Here’s what she had to say about a few of her experiences:

Kanye West and Rihanna

When Sia was asked what her songwriting sessions with Kanye were like (they both worked on RiRi’s upcoming album), she gave the kind of blunt answer that would make Ye proud. “Well, he wasn’t there!” Sia, 39, said with a laugh. “They’ll entice me into a session by saying, ‘Rihanna will definitely be there’ or 'Kanye will definitely be there,’ but it’s hilarious because I turn up and, almost always, they never come. So I went into the studio to write for Rihanna with Kanye and neither of them showed up and stayed for less than an hour. They had two tracks. They told me what they had wanted. There were notes from Kanye, and I can’t even remember what they were."

So, Sia for president in 2020? She’s actually Australian, but we already have a rough idea for a winning campaign slogan: Sia, she promises to actually be there!

Adele

Perfect, as expected.

"Well, she’s extremely talented, so it was really easy,” Sia said about her writing partner on the song “Alive,” which Sia ultimately recorded for her new album. “It’s funny because both of us are quite dominant because we are both skillful at our jobs of songwriting or singing. I think that maybe we’re not dominant but confident. I think because we’re both very confident in our skills, we’re just naturally alpha in some way in terms of our work."

In fact, Sia was nervous about how her time with the "Hello” songstress had gone.

“I remember the day after I wrote with Adele. I wrote her saying, 'I’m just writing because I want to make sure I wasn’t too overly dominant. I’m feeling a bit insecure that it was a bit annoying working with me as opposed to satisfying.’ That was what my experience was like. I felt kind of insecure. I’m a fan and I want to do a good job and I want to work for the artist when I’m writing with them. Sometimes that can bring up insecurities. Then she wrote me back and was like, 'What are you talking about?’”

(Photo: Getty Images)

Katy Perry

Working with Perry wasn’t necessarily a walk through the clouds (otherwise known as the set of her “California Gurls” video), although everything worked out in the end.

“[Perry’s] also quite dominant, and she’s extremely analytical,” Sia said. “I actually quit within the first hour of our first 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 for me. 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.”

Beyoncé

Sia offered a glimpse into the science of creating a Bey-approved song.

“The process is like a writing camp, essentially,” Sia explained. “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. She’ll say, 'I like the verse from that. I like the pre-chorus from that. Can you try mixing it with that?’ In the end, she had maybe 25 songs of mine on hold, and I was very excited to get a couple of them back. Definitely one is on [This Is Acting].”