Pop singer Sia on her long friendship with ‘Uncle’ Colin Hay

Colin Hay and Sia Furler at the Global APRA Music Awards in Los Angeles last week. Picture: Nick Demarais

A little-known link between two giants of Australian music was revealed in Los Angeles last week, when Colin Hay was presented with a distinguished services award by his old friend Sia Furler at the inaugural Global APRA Music Awards. Hay is best known as the frontman of world-conquering Melbourne rock band Men at Work and a singer-songwriter whose solo career has continued since that band broke up in 1985; Furler is a multi-platinum pop artist from Adelaide with a towering voice and a preference for hiding her face behind a blonde wig for much of the past decade.

“For those who don’t know, I was partially reared by Colin,” said Furler to the audience, before turning her attention to the man of the hour. “You met me when I was a baby, and you were nice to me, and you were always nice to me. I remember once at a dinner party when I was about 11, you were living in New York, and you said: ‘You should come visit us or something’.”

Furler soon took him up on the offer, and at 12, she lived with Hay for six weeks in New York City, and he got her a TV so she could watch the Late Show with David Letterman every night. “I remember you had to go into the Grammys, but I wanted to just sit in the limousine, because I’d never been in one,” she said. “It had a little television in it, and I remember watching it and seeing Uncle Collie go up and accept an award and thinking, ‘This seems like a pretty good life! Yeah! I guess I’ll do this’. And if you’ve ever heard me sing, you will now notice Uncle Collie’s in everything I do. You’re my favourite singer. I love you. Congratulations. Come and give me a cuddle!”

Hay took to the stage and did just that, then said, “Sia was always a hard act to follow”. Reflecting on the time they lived together circa 1988, he recalled: “She wanted to watch David Letterman but her room was quite messy, and I had no parenting skills whatsoever. So I would say ‘Listen, if you clean your room and have a shower, I’ll let you watch David Letterman and we’ll have Haagen-Dazs ice cream’.”

Cut to 2008, and Hay was sitting at home and barely able to believe his eyes as he watched his one-time housemate performing on the very same TV show they had watched together two decades earlier. After Furler’s stunning performance of her song, Soon We’ll Be Found, Hay recalled, “Letterman came over and he said to her – and he really meant this, too – ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t get any better than that!’. And Sia looked at him, and then she looked straight down the camera – and I was sitting up there in Topanga Canyon f..king weeping, weeping, weeping! That was a good moment.”