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Sia is back with powerful new track The Greatest, and the video stars the teen sensation that has become her avatar of sorts, 13-year-old dancer Maddie Ziegler.
The clip for The Greatest is stylistically very similar to Sia’s Chandelier, Elastic Heart and Big Girls Cry videos: the young dancer appears in a melancholy setting void of much colour or life, but soon brings energy and emotion through her dance in line with Sia’s powerful voice and lyrics.
The Greatest video appears to be a tribute to the Orlando nightclub shooting in June that killed 49 people. At the start Maddie wipes away tears to reveal rainbow paint on her face, and as some eagled-eyed social media users noted, there are 49 dancers who at the end all fall down on the floor in a room riddled with bullet holes.
Sia rarely shows her face in public, and the Australian singer and music producer discussed the reason why in detail when she appeared on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke segment.
“I was a singer for 10 or 11 years to mediocre success,” she said. “I was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and I sobered up and I decided I didn’t want to be an artist anymore because I was starting to get a little bit famous and it was destabilising in some way.
“I thought, ‘What doesn’t exist in pop music at the moment?’ And it was mystery! I was like, ‘There’s pictures on Instagram of everyone at the dentist.'”
The Greatest, an uplifting, tropical electro-pop track that we’re sure to hear a lot of this summer, also features Kendrick Lamar, however the rapper’s part has not been included in the music video.
