« Unstoppable » by Sia

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My latest musical crush is the song « Unstoppable » by Sia. The thing is, I’ve discovered Sia only one year ago, and since then I have been obsessed by her songs and her character. I found her music when I was deep into one of my  long depression phases, and I don’t know if I can say it helped me healing, because most of her songs -not to say all of them- are about depression, sadness, loosing loved one’s, falling into all kinds of substance abuses: well everything is about self-destruction. It’s like listing to sad music when you’re sad: it only makes you cry harder! But one can argue that it makes you reflect on your life and enables you to  let out all of the emotions you have build up inside. Anyway it kind of helped me by making me feel like someone somewhere understood what I was going through, and that no matter how deep into the darkness you are, there might be a kind of way to go through it.

So knowing Sia’s music as I thought I did, you can imagine how surprised I was hearing this title! First of all, the title itself is « unstoppable » which conveys the idea of being invicible, strong, full of life, happy etc. Well, everything I don’t think I am, and I don’t see Sia singing about. It intrigued me, so I listened.

At first I only paid attention to the chorus, which confused me even more. It goes like this:

I’m unstoppable
I’m a Porsche with no brakes
I’m invincible
Yeah, I win every single game
I’m so powerful
I don’t need batteries to play
I’m so confident, yeah, I’m unstoppable today
Unstoppable today, unstoppable today
Unstoppable today, I’m unstoppable today   

The chorus is about a strong, confident and bold woman who fears nothing and no one, and who’s on fire, full of life and has enough energy to go on and on and on….

It sounds nothing like my state of mind, neither does it sounds like Sia’s usual songs.

So I listened a second time. And there it was!! The chorus was a trick guys!Iknew it! Lol.

But seriously, listening to all the others couplets, you realize the song is actually about fooling people around you. The first couplet depicts how she makes her acquaintances think that everything is okay, by telling them what she knows they want to hear, and faking being happy, while crying under the sunglasses she put on to perform her « I’m fine » attitude. It’s about acting so damn well that nobody ever really knows what you are going through.

All smiles, I know what it takes to fool this town
I’ll do it ’til the sun goes down and all through the night
time
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’ll tell you what you wanna hear
Leave my sunglasses on while I shed a tear
It’s never the right time, yeah, yeah

But in  the end of this verse, she says that she never says anything because it’s never the right time. There is the exact feeling people struggling with depression always have: you feel like people never have time to liste to you dwelling on your issues. You feel like it’s never the right time to bring it up. So the only way we deal with it is to « put on our armor around and show how strong we are » because that is the only option left.

I put my arm around, I’ll you how strong how I am
I put my arm around, I’ll show you that I am 

The the chorus goes on again, and it’s like a different person because while the verses are kind of slow, the chorus is always loud.

And finally the second verse  discloses the real her: who breaks down alone, hiding her pain so well, but so hurt. She also refers to the fact that to make friends you have to show your emotions, but she’s been too hurt to let anyone in. So she cries alone because she can’t make true friends.

Break down, only alone I will cry on out
You’ll never see what’s hiding out
Hiding out deep down, yeah, yeah
I know, I’ve heard that to let your feelings go
Is the only way to make friendships grow
But I’m too afraid now, yeah, yeah 

And the chorus goes again, loud.

The structure of the song  emphasizes the changes of state of mind that she goes through when she goes from crying when she’s alone, to acting like if everything was okay when people are around.  And the metaphor of the armor that she puts on before going out in public refers to the masks some of us have to put on every morning before going into the world. That armor stands for the rising and the falling of the curtain at the theatre.

This verse makes me think of the different stages you go through when you struggle with depression: some days you’re okay, even happy and you feel like you’re on the top of the world, and other days you just stay in bed crying because you have no one to share your deep pain with.

So despite the first impression, the song is actually about suffering, being lonely and misunderstood. It really is the story of my life I must say, but it is Sia’s too so I feel less lonely in this journey of mine.