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Sia Furler had been performing live for nearly two decades when, during her North American tour to support her fifth album, We Are Born (Monkey Puzzle), her hair started falling out, she began losing weight and shaking like she had Parkinson’s disease. Doctors diagnosed panic disorder and prescribed Xanax.
“It was crazy. I was starting to think, like, ‘Fuck, am I in withdrawal because I had a couple of drinks last night?'” the Australian pop star says over the phone from her Los Angeles home. “Nobody knew what was wrong, but I knew something was so wrong with me.”
Last August, Furler collapsed five songs into a Vancouver concert. Promoters told the crowd it was heat exhaustion.
“It was mortifying, because that’s never happened to me,” she says. “They were telling me it was a panic attack, and I just felt like a huge fucking loser.”
She later found out she was suffering from Graves’ disease, a serious autoimmune disorder. She spent eight months resting, underwent radiation on her thyroid, gained 40 pounds and began to re-evaluate her place inWhat the music business.
“It certainly has had an influence on how I feel about my life,” she says. “I’m 35. What do I want in life?”
That’s why Furler is billing her summer tour as her last one indefinitely. She’ll continue to record – she’s working on two solo albums, including one produced by the Strokes guitarist Nick Valensi – but has shifted her primary focus to writing songs for other pop stars in an effort to remain more grounded.
Her work on Christina Aguilera’s 2010 Bionic album opened doors in L.A., and she’s since penned cuts for Adam Lambert, Rihanna, Beyoncé and B-52s singer Kate Pierson, and has confirmed tracks on forthcoming releases by David Guetta, Flo Rida and Leona Lewis.
“There are all these kids who are hungry for them, so writing songs for them allows me to stay at home and relax,” she says. “I can’t believe I couldn’t slip into this earlier. But, you know, the universe provides.”
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