Watch Sia’s Powerful Performances On Saturday Night Live
Amazing.
When Sia released the film-clip to her new single ‘Elastic Heart’ a few weeks ago, it took less than an hour for the outrage machine that is the internet to whir into motion.
The clip, starring a shirtless Shia LaBeouf alongside 12-year-old Maddie Ziegler — known from American reality show Dance Moms, and her exceptional performance in Sia’s preceding clip for ‘Chandelier’ — was pounced on as “predatory”, “inappropriate”, and “disgusting”.
“I anticipated some ‘pedophelia!!!’ cries for this video,” Sia said on Twitter, after apologising to those who felt triggered. “All I can say is Maddie and Shia are two of the only actors I felt culd play these two warring ‘sia’ self states.”
Although she was as perplexed as the rest of us by the outrage, Sia seems to have taken it on board; in this weekend’s Saturday Night Live performance below, Shia’s role is played by a taller woman, dressed like an older counterpart to Ziegler’s characterisation — and the performance is no less powerful as a result.
After a costume change, the masked singer returned to the stage with a signing mime, to deliver a more stripped-back and emotive rendition of ‘Chandelier’ that had more in common with her 2004 album, Colour The Small One, than the single itself.
The performance is also notable for containing a mime that I actually want to hug.
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If that didn’t do it for you, here she is again, with Lena Dunham in Maddie Ziegler’s role for Late Night With Seth Myers in June.