The new Sia Christmas album, Everyday is Christmas, is fantastically festive. Sia, who never shows her face in live performances and interviews, is an enigma, but in this album she demonstrates that you can be both mysterious and enjoy mulled wine, pair a mask that covers your face with a festive jumper and be serious and into tinsel!
The album opens with ‘Santa’s Coming for Us’, in an exposed and vulnerable opening vocal line. This quickly cuts into all the bells and whistles of your classic Christmas tune, with “doo-das” and constant sleigh bells backing . So damn catchy. ‘Candy Cane Lane’, the next track on the album, is jazzy and soulful. It is so incredibly contagious, and just the right amount of irritating that is acceptable in any Christmas song — I dare you not to dance listening to it. And then we’re onto a classically beautiful Sia ballad, ‘Snowman’, with a really special animated video to accompany it. It is a meditation on time running out and aging: “Don’t cry, snowman, don’t you fear the sun/Who’ll carry me without legs to run, honey/Without legs to run, honey”. I really recommend both a watch and listen.
There is even a song called ‘Puppies are Forever’, and it is truly and wonderfully awful. Honestly, it’s really terrible — worst song of the album. Even so, it makes you think. Sia sings: ‘Cause they’re so cute and fluffy with shiny coats, but will you love ’em when they’re old and slow”. It is a lyric so lame that you almost wonder if it is ironic and you as a listener are too slow to understand its complexities. Sia is, after all, the woman behind profound and complex tunes such as ‘Chandelier’, whose lyrics and choreography of the mesmerising video starring Maddie Ziegler (who is on the cover of this album) contribute to an exceptionally moving account of alcohol and escape. Where is Shia LaBeouf dressed in a Santa costume in a cage with no other explanation given?
Perhaps, if we take this album at face value, it is intended as just an accessible and joyful album. After all, this truly does tick many of the boxes of a straight, tinsel-laced Christmas album. ‘Everyday is Christmas’, the title track of the album, is sweet, and the backing music is catchy and rhythmic. But there is something so wonderfully contradictory about Sia releasing a properly festive Christmas album, someone whose previously discography includes Healing is Difficult, Some People Have Real Problems and her breakthrough, 1000 Forms of Fear. I can’t wait to see some live performance videos — which will inevitably but inexplicably combine Christmas cheer and anonymity. It just seems so unlikely.
All in all, this is a wonderful album, though I am clearly biased because I love Sia. She’s wonderful. Many of the songs are tacky and the melodies and lyrics perhaps a little more on the basic side, but isn’t that part of the joy of Christmas? While there are some incredibly impressive Christmas tracks, sometimes all we want is something we can sing along to, feeling festive for a limited amount of time. Sia concludes her Christmas album with ‘Underneath the Christmas Lights’, my favourite song of the album. Her voice truly is beautiful, and the harmonies and pace of the song chilling. Like so chilling that it makes you want to snuggle up with some eggnog. And I guess that’s her intention. Clever gal.
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