Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 11/29/2012 at 11:02 AM Videos

The Popdust Files: covers, Diamonds, rihanna, sia

If there was a Best Supporting Actress-type category at the Grammys this year, the front-runner for the award would have to be Sia Furler. The Australian singer/songwriter has proven a surprisingly solid EDM siren as the singer on hits like Flo Rida’s “Wild Ones” and David Guetta’s “Titanium,” and she’s also co-written a couple other smashes as well, including Rihanna’s “Diamonds,” currently enjoying its second week on top the Billboard Hot 100. (All that’s missing from her resume is playing the love interest in a Gotye music video or something.)

If you didn’t know that Sia wrote that Rihanna song, though, and you just happened to be in attendance a the Norwegian-American Achievement Ceremony (?) last night, now you know. Sia performed a live solo version of the song, with just a piano part playing on a laptop for accompaniment, and the production team Stargate (there’s the Norwegian connection) sitting nearby . Her performance doesn’t shed a ton of light on the song, and we prefer Rihanna’s “shine BRITE like a di-ah-mon” pronunciation, but it shows the song’s strength as a torch-song ballad, and Sia has a much more powerful voice for it than we would have expected.

But hey, what’s that part of the end with Sia prepping to sing Ne-Yo’s “Let Me Love You (Until You Learn to Love Yourself)”? We had no idea she was behind that one. Can we get a video of that, somebody?

[Vulture]