← all Middle 8 videos
9:23 · 1,542 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The reading that drives the video: Chandelier sounds like a party anthem and is actually about being trapped in substance abuse, told from inside the cycle.
▶ 00:00:23
- Sia has said on Genius that the song is about suppressing fear through self-medication, and about making party friends into a higher power, which works until it does not.
▶ 00:01:05
- The backstory starts with Breathe Me closing the last episode of Six Feet Under, which gave an indie pop career its first real push.
▶ 00:01:42
- After her fifth record she grew uncomfortable with fame, skipped press and started wearing masks on stage, and a breakup plus health problems pushed her into depression.
▶ 00:01:42
- She has spoken about reaching a point of planning to end her life, and a friend's phone call that night led her instead into a twelve-step program.
▶ 00:02:49
- The underlying medical fact had been missed. She had been diagnosed with a panic disorder and actually had Graves' disease, an overactive thyroid producing the nervous energy, mood swings and sleeplessness.
▶ 00:04:55
- The cleverest claim is structural: verse-chorus form itself enacts the relapse, because the song must return to the pre-chorus behaviour, and the big celebratory choruses flatter the listener the way the drink flatters the narrator.
▶ 00:03:31
- She retired as a performer to write for other people, and Titanium was a demo meant for Alicia Keys that David Guetta released in her own voice without her knowledge.
▶ 00:05:13
- Chandelier was started as another Rihanna song, pulled from her notebook as a party title, and she kept it once the chorus came out as autobiography.
▶ 00:06:17
- It reached number eight on the Hot 100 as her first top ten as lead artist, and the face-hiding and blonde wig began as a way to promote the record without becoming a celebrity, then became the marketing itself.
▶ 00:07:03