Some people have real problems with Sia. And we’re going to tell you them.

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[4.20]

Will Adams: “Chandelier” epitomizes everything wrong with Sia’s recent career path. First, there is no worse setting for Sia’s vowel-mangling vocals than Top 40 pop lyrics, and while virtually all of her pop patrons emulate her tics, it’s most prominent from the source. She is practically incomprehensible on the verses — to the point where I’d rather listen to her compare herself to a horse, because I would at least understand her there — and her slurred “one-two-three-drink” line just sounds awkward. Second, her recent success as a hook writer has shifted all her priorities to the chorus; “Chandelier” couldn’t care less about its verses and bridges. Its only concern is blasting you with its distended chorus, resulting in two eight-bar sections and a post-chorus, all of which carry on and on. Third, this chorus-obsessed bent leads to howled melodies that aren’t so much inspiring as they are hair-raising. It doesn’t help that Sia sounds like she’s about to pop a vein during the second part of the chorus. I fear for her safety when she has to sing this live.
[2]

Crystal Leww: Sia is how melisma has fought back in the pop vocal delivery world, and she’s the prime example of how delivery can make or break a song. Her grandiose vocal style tends to drag everything out of every syllable, here twisting “chandelier” into three pitches in a completely unnecessary way. It works over a beat that is so simple that it’s confining, and less here when there’s space for those vocal changeups to happen more than twice a word. Sia and Ryan Tedder really are of the same breed: this type of fare is really just an American Idol contestant that’s better produced.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Sia’s slightly off tune speak singing adds much needed complexity to her songs. When they are given to other singers they tend to flatten. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: A cruel squandering of talent, potential, and melody, or considering her writing credits maybe not, for this is precisely what her resume would lead me to think is a Rihanna ballad.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Her pipes are propping the score. I mean, jeez, I was prepped for mealy-mouthed patois and then she cracks open this ragged adolescent searchlight. It’s a sidestep from a yodel, and it’s insane. The Auto Tune part was surely included for contrast. Twenty years ago, this might’ve merited strings; now it’s boom-bap drumming. Either way it’d be one hell of a scam.
[7]

John Seroff: Sia, for me, was a once potential Robyn who has since become the 20teen’s Linda Perry: inoffensive, effective, popular and a little boring. I suppose you don’t make the cover of Billboard by going against the grain. Chris Rosen’s arch labeling of this as “the best Rihanna song of 2014” is mostly dead on, except it’s not a particularly good song. I’m giving this a bonus point for the amusing phrasing of “chandelier” as “chimney” but I have the sneaking suspicion that quirk is going to curdle after I hear it shouted by gaggles of drunks on every pub corner in the too-near future for what I fear to be far too long.
[4]

Mallory O’Donnell: Presumably someone out there derives pleasure from Sia’s voice, I’ve never been able to filter anything useful out of the FX and affectations. This clumsy arrangement doesn’t help – it tries to be three different songs and that only abets Sia who is trying to be at least six different singers. Always remove one thing before you leave the track.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Hitmakers gonna hitmake, and Greg Kurstin and Sia know hits. They’ve written a YOLO Traviata here: a party girl’s final words of resolve, living for the moment because the next moment takes place in a hospital bed, but only as dark as you want it to be. That autotuned “1-2-3 drink” is presumably meant to sound sad and nonhuman but exists so high schoolers can use it for actual 1-2-3-drinking (as is long drinking-song tradition), and anything troubling can and will be discarded to take in that massive standalone chorus, so big and shameless in its clutch at your gut I’m shocked it isn’t actually the Phantom of the Opera overture. Unfortunately, it is also the problem. Sia’s voice is fine over little trap snares, or for tricks like singing “phone’s blowing up” like she’s a ringtone, and at least it’s less jarring when it’s actually her singing with her voice. But it’s no good for a chorus. Like on “Only Girl (in the World),” you can hear how it’s supposed to end: “I’m gonna swing from the chandelier,” once more with purpose, one long note drawn out as the chords resolve, no melisma, no nonsense, and multitracked and Pro Tooled until the pathos is superhuman. Sia knows this already; shit, even David Guetta and Fergie can figure this out. I have no idea what Sia’s trying to show off.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: I played this back to back with “Drink to Get Drunk” and I’m now completely sure that Sia’s voice on this is as much her absorbing Rihanna’s tics as Rihanna absorbing hers. Badly needs an explosion noise somewhere around the chorus, perhaps over the entirety of it; I’m this close to a nose bleed just listening to it.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: I am really just not a fan at all of her singing here.
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