Sia: Together

People when reviewing this music video almost invariably link it to the movie it's connected to. I have not seen this movie and if this music video is anything to go by this whole thing feels like Simple Jack as directed by Ken Russel (after receiving a double-lobotomy). However, this is just the music video nothing else and... This is bad. There's no way around it.

I originally had a very long paragraph here about my thoughts on Ziegler's performance (which I feel was relevant here as it bled across from the leaked trailers into just being awful!) Sia's awful mishandling of PR being one of the most quixotic things I have ever seen hype up a film (up to and including getting into twitter fights with every autistic person who has a problem with being infantized, publicly saying that her reason for casting was nepotism, that she hates musicals... despite this being a musical), how she got controversial, closely associated with eugenics group Autism Speaks involved and how I'm not on the spectrum but I totally see how she rode her own hype train off the deepest cliff. I think I summed it up better here but it's just driving a point that Sia essentially... If you know about this movie it's impossible to be impartial to it. With that said I really tried to ask if this video was okay even if I can write a paragraph about the baggage which (lets be fair here) is entirely Sia's fault... It's not.

Okay, I'm going to dive away from the music for a minute. I need a minute to pace myself some more because... I can't help BUT hate the directing here. This isn't adding to the previous paragraph, I will explain myself. This music video is one continuous shot with an elaborate choreographed dance number. That's fine however the camera work is pulled in way too close to see what is going on even in a basic way and the main characters of the movie disappear from the shot several times briefly. The set is also entirely painted rainbow and dancers keep being added to the video.

Lets break this down. Why are shots in movies the way that they are? It serves to tell the story or an artistic meaning behind it and that goes for everything. If you're doing a one-shot scene then what you should do is have the important stuff followed and not throw in anything distracting. Sia here seems adamant to fixate on the other dancers and hold on them even though the movie isn't about them and it isn't their "pander to some reductive stereotype" THIS IS ALL A FANTASY thing. The credits list 6 people in front of the camera and there are many more which don't seem to hold any purpose to the final film. Adding dancers to an already visually heavy music video like this and doing it in one shot is like directing a fight scene in one shot and not giving anybody cues. How would you follow that?

There's also this moment where Hudson and Odom do this musical chairs thing in one direction while Ziegler runs around the chairs in the opposite direction. It's probably one of the most amateurish looking things I have ever seen. That has an easy fix, pull back enough to see both. The set is big enough and if not, this is by a viral singer doing a vanity project - find a bigger set.

I'm not done with this, I'm not even digging deeper and deeper into the same issue. There are moments which feel like mistakes that made it into this like one guy enters from a door, the camera tilts down to his feet walking then it tilts back up so they're dancing with Ziegler. This is almost sequential so it's not even a "this is a reveal" situation because we were just moved all around this location. This is also everywhere in this video. Looking at the cinematographer's credits this guy is by no means inexperienced.so I don't know if this is from a genuine lack of talent on his part or if this is more of Sia's idiocy at play as she's credited as the director.

Adding to the "lets throw everything at the wall" directing style, the dancers that seem to be there for no reason, the amateurish cinematography... What ELSE could make this music video an eyesore? Well Ziegler and Hudson are wearing blown up hands because... autistic people like hands? Again, I haven't seen this movie but Sia released this context-less. Let's compare this to something that is also weird and psychedelic and has the name of someone popular attached - Tommy (1975), Ken Russel there quickly establishes that the world we are in is weird (as the whole album it's based off was a metaphor for the guitarist of The Who finding religion) and as such you can look up any random clip on YouTube and enjoy it without context and there is some really on the nose symbolism in Tommy as well. Here, they just put giant inflatable hands on people.

The rest however I've already touched on, I get second hand cringe watching Ziegler's performance in this video (like imagine someone sending their boss something and instead send their browser history from their home computer, that's how I feel about watching this performance) although it's not her fault. There's lighting effects that cue with dance moves (because adding that on top of what's already a visual headache is... just AWFUL!) so I'll just go onto the music.

It's bad. Musically this sounds like Rihanna songs from a decade ago, Sia also doesn't have good enunciating in this song either (I had to look up the lyrics) and said lyrics have bizarre pop culture references in the song and she rhymes "I can hear the thunder" with "Give me some Stevie Wonder"... Need I say more?

In short, even if you take away that I don't like the music there is NOTHING here that redeems it. It's so hard to watch this music video on a basic level that I wouldn't expect from a 9 time Grammy nominated artist to name a touch of her success. I have genuinely seen low-budget bands do far better with a lot less. Even if you take out the controversy surrounding the movie that this music video is taken from, this is just awful.