Chris Braide began working with Sia at a pivotal point in her career, when she was still an independent-minded artist known for a series of beautiful, idiosyncratic albums that had earned her a devoted cult following.
What struck Chris immediately was the extraordinary character of her voice — not only its emotional power, but its untapped potential as a great pop instrument. Their early collaborations began exploring that side of Sia more deliberately: combining the vulnerability and individuality that had always defined her writing with bigger melodies, soaring choruses and a more direct, widescreen approach to production.
It was an important period of transition. Working alongside Sia, and subsequently within the creative world that included David Guetta, Chris helped develop the meeting point between Sia’s distinctive artistry and modern electronic pop — a combination that would become central to the sound for which she is now known around the world.
Their collaboration developed into a decade-long creative relationship, with Chris co-writing and producing songs across several chapters of Sia’s career. Rather than changing what made her unique, the aim was always to amplify it: preserving the rawness, eccentricity and emotional honesty of those earlier records while allowing the sheer scale of her voice to occupy a much bigger musical landscape.
Throughout those years, Chris had one particular ambition: to write a song with Sia that would endure — a song that might one day be regarded as a standard in her catalogue.
He could never have imagined what would happen with Unstoppable.
Written by Sia and Chris Braide, the song grew far beyond its beginnings to become a global phenomenon and one of the defining songs of Sia’s career. Years after its original release, Unstoppable found an extraordinary new life around the world, reaching generations of listeners and ultimately becoming Sia’s most popular solo song.
For Chris, its success represents something particularly meaningful: the fulfilment of an ambition that began many years earlier, when two songwriters were simply sitting in a room together trying to find the place where Sia’s extraordinary voice, a great melody and a universal emotion could meet.
