Sia Says She Didn’t Leave the Bed for Three Years Amid ‘Severe Depression’ After Divorce From Erik Anders Lang

Sia is getting candid about experiencing extreme lows amid a gut-wrenching divorce. The songstress split from her first husband, Erik Anders Lang, in 2016 after two years of marriage. 

“I got divorced and that really threw me for a loop,” she says in a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music 1. “There was such a dark time that I was in bed for three years, really, really severely depressed. And so I couldn’t really do anything for that period of time.” 

The 47-year-old artist is gearing up for the release of her upcoming album, Reasonable Woman, her first full-length offering in eight years. In her new interview, she shares that it’s comprised of songs she’s been writing “here and there” over the “last six, seven years.” 

“Finally, it just turned out we had enough songs to make an album, enough good ones,” she continues. “I just rely on my management to tell me when we’ve got enough good ones, because I don’t really… I can tell when I think one is particularly good, I think I can tell, but they tell me when we’ve got 11 or 12 or 13 enough good ones, real good ones.”

Reasonable Woman is set to be released in Spring 2024, but for now, Sia is giving fans a taste of what to expect by dropping a new single, “Gimme Love.” In the cover art, she appears to be snuggling with baby pigs while putting her “don’t think” hand tattoo on display. It’s her first new song since 2021.

“You don’t wanna dance with me / But, babe, that’s what I need / Please now, just this once / Dance, babe, dance, baby,” she sings on the Jesse Shatkin-produced track. “You don’t wanna sing with me / But, babe, that’s what I need / Please, now, just this once.”

On the chorus, she repeats, “I don’t ask for much / Gimme love, gimme love, gimme love, baby.” 

The second verse, she doubles down: “You don’t wanna fight for me / But, babe, that’s what I need / Please now, just this once.”

Sia, whose real name is Sia Furler, has found love again in recent years, as she quietly remarried in an intimate Italian ceremony with Dan Bernard in May. The Australian-born superstar and her beau reportedly invited less than a handful of guests to the event, with only six attendees present including the bride and groom.

The “Unstoppable” singer has kept her personal life closely guarded and it’s unclear exactly how long she and Bernard have been an item. The couple was photographed, wearing masks over their faces, at the Los Angeles premiere of West Side Story at the El Capitan Theatre in December 2021. 

In a May interview, around the time of her wedding, Sia did open up about a personal struggle as she learned that she is on the Autism spectrum. 

“I’m on the spectrum and I’m in recovery. There’s a lot of things,” Sia told Survivor finalist Carolyn Wiger during an appearance on Rob Has a Podcast.  Carolyn — who quickly became a Survivor fan favorite by being open about her social anxieties and her struggles with addiction — came in third on the show, but got a consolation prize from the star in the form of $100,000. “Being in recovery and also knowing about which neuroatypicality you may have or may not have, I think one of the greatest things is nobody can ever know you and love you when you’re filled with secrets and living in shame.”

Sia, a Survivor superfan, seemed to suggest that her autism spectrum diagnosis came rather recently, telling Carolyn, “For 45 years I was like, ‘I’ve got to go put my human suit on.’ Only in the last two years have I become fully, fully myself.”

Sia added, “I just wanted to say how inspiring it is to have someone in the world who is going out and didn’t put her human suit on, who just showed up and was willing to be rejected, and willing to be the weird one. The kook in me recognizes the kook in you.”

Sia’s autism spectrum reveal came more than two years after the singer received backlash for casting Maddie Ziegler, who’s neurotypical, as an autistic teen in her film, Music.

Sia has gained notoriety for her on-stage persona, which almost always includes an oversized wig that hides her face. In her new interview with Lowe, she explains why she may be ready to let the disguise go. 

“When I got sober is when I put the wig on my face and that’s when I had in-ears and wig and I’m just like, ‘It’s like I’m in a little bubble with myself,'” she shares. “But now that I know that that’s what’s going on, I think maybe one day I’ll do a show with my face out again and have little fun talking to the audience and being heckled and getting present again because those shows were really fun back in the day before I had the wig on.” 

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