Is Sia Already The MVP of the 2016 Festival Season?
For the last two weekends at Coachella, Sia succeeded in flooring crowds — and critics, including Fuse's own — with a peerless vocal performance and stage presentation that throws everything we expect in a festival set for a loop. The two-weekend festival has seen its share of recent show-stopping moments, sure: The Tupac hologram, the kick-off event of Outkast’s hugely anticipated reunion tour, Daft Punk’s giant LED pyramid unveiled long before “Get Lucky” was permanently lodged in our brains—these are all events that have contributed to the FOMO complex we feel when we miss out on a major music festival and the once-in-a-lifetime experiences they cultivate. Sia gave Coachella—and will presumably give Boston Calling, Panorama and her other upcoming festival crowds—a similar experience, and she did so while keeping a guarded distance from her audience.
This makes Sia a bit of a festival unicorn: She flips the script on the communal experience and uses the high-impact arena of a major festival to create high art and render it a medium in its own right. The festival game has a fluid set of unspoken rules, and Sia basically crumpled them up and threw ‘em away before mounting a full-scale production of her set in Indio.
1m
2m
44m
1h 27m
1h 18m
1m
1m
1m
2m
2m
1h 25m
21m
41s
2m
1m
41m
1h 27m
20m
19m
44m
20m
41m
39s
2m
1m
1h 3m
2m
5m
8m
1h 33m
51s
41m
20m
6m
1h 49m
1m
21m
1m
2m
3m
20m
2m
1h 39m
1h 1m
41m
20m
41m
21m
2m
3m
2m
42m
2m
21m
21m
21m
1m
1m
5m
2m
23m
21m
1m
46s
1m
1m
21m
1m
2m
1h 45m
1h 2m
1m
45m
44m
20m
21m
1h 27m
1h 20m
1h 21m
23m
1h 34m
2m
1m
9m
5m
2m
20m
59s
23m
21m
1h 22m
1h 36m
48m
22m
1h 3m
21m