Elastic Heart

Story of Song

Sia wrote this song about finding love after heartbreak and the pain that comes from a bad relationship. She hoped that Katy Perry would record it for the Hunger Games Catching Fire soundtrack but Katy Perry passed, so she did her own vocal. Sia’s manager talked to The Weeknd sing Abel Tesfaye to add his falsetto to the mix, hoping it would increase the song’s chances of being chosen for the soundtrack. The plan actually worked and after Sia was shown an early draft of the movie, she rewrote the lyrics to make the song fit the film franchise. The controversial music video directed by Sia herself and Daniel Askill, starring Shia LaBeoufand Dance Moms’ Maddie Ziegler. In an interview behind the scenes Sia said: “I thought it would be interesting if Shia was working with Maddie as if she’s one of his self states, maybe his inner child or maybe one of his demons. We switch between her representing some of his self states. I brought back to whole same team from ‘Chandelier’ because we all worked beautifully together that day. We all worked hard. I had emails from people after saying it was one of the best experiences of their working life”. She continued, “the ‘Elastic Heart’ is part of a trilogy because we had such an amazing time making that video we decided we wanted to do a trilogy. About the video’s dancing, Sia said “It’s so hard, dancing is so hard…I was watching Dance Moms and I saw Maddie Ziegler and I thought she was incredible. I cried”. Shia LaBeouf said about his first meeting with Sia: “We sat in a coffee shop and she basically walked me through what her trilogy idea is and I was walking her through what my auxiliary art stuff was”.

The song started as a track that Diplo sent to Sia. Her reaction was immediate, Sia told Billboard Magazine: “For the first time ever, I called someone and said, ‘Do not send that track to anyone else – I’ll pay for the track tomorrow”, he said: “You don’t have to pay for the track, you dingaling, it’s yours”.

Sia discussed her songwriting process during an interview with Australian radio station Nova 96.9 DJs Fitzy and Wippa. “Melody is pure intuition. I don’t use any thinking brain when I do that. That’s totally in the zone, the melody will tell me what the song should be about, the tone of the song. That’s when the intellect comes in. Because I have a list of possible titles and concepts and I expand on that”.

Release date

October 1, 2013

Songwriter/s

Sia Furler, Thomas Wesley, Pentz, Andrew  Swanson, Abel Tesfaye

Label

RCA – Republic – Lionsgate

Chart Rankings

US – 17

UK – 10

GERMANY  – 29

Elastic Heart’s video was nominated for the 2015 VMA Award for Best Female Video. Billboard chose the video as one of the 10 best music videos of 2015. PopCrush also chose it as one of its favorites, and as of September 2015, the video had received more than 392 million views on YouTube.

Elastic Heart debuted at number 67 on the Australian (ARIA) Singles charts, at number 27 on the Walloon Ultratip, and reached number 36 in Switzerland. The song was a success in New Zealand, peaking at number 7 on the national singles chart and was certified gold by the Recorded Music NZ (RMNZ). Elastic Heart debuted at number 79 on the UK Singles Chart in October 2013 and climbed all the way to number 10 in January 2015. In the US Billboard Hot 100 it reached number 17.

Artist’s age on release date

Sia was 38 years old when she released Elastic Heart

Cover Versions

Sia re-recorded a solo version of “Elastic Heart” in 2014 for her sixth studio album 1000 Forms of Fear and released it in 2015 as a single.