A song with two public histories
“Sia Hologram” most commonly refers to “Hologram (Smoke and Mirrors),” a composition credited to Sia Furler and Fernando Garibay. Its history is unusually easy to misstate because listeners encountered it in two fundamentally different forms: first as an unauthorized recording sung by Sia, and later as a properly released soundtrack performance by actor Raffey Cassidy.
The Sia vocal was among several recordings reported as leaks in April 2016. French station Europe 2 grouped “Hologram” with “Black and Blue” and “Life Jacket,” explicitly describing the songs as having leaked rather than been released. That distinction matters. There is no reliable evidence that Sia, her label or another rights holder issued her demo commercially in 2016, and surviving fan uploads should not be treated as official singles, collaborations or sanctioned previews.
“Hologram” did eventually receive an authorized public life. Cassidy’s performance appeared on the soundtrack to Brady Corbet’s film Vox Lux, released by Three Six Zero Recordings and Columbia Records on December 14, 2018. Apple Music’s soundtrack listing and contemporary release coverage from Consequence identify the recording as Cassidy’s, not Sia’s. The official title is “Hologram (Smoke and Mirrors).”
What the credits establish
The strongest evidence is contained in the film itself. Neon’s official Vox Lux press notes credit Sia Furler and Fernando Garibay as writers, Garibay as producer and Raffey Cassidy as performer. Those credits do not name Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, Skrillex, Diplo or Jack Ü.
That last point is necessary because unofficial uploads have repeatedly attached famous names to the leaked Sia vocal. Some called it a Jack Ü song. Others connected it to Lady Gaga’s “PARTYNAUSEOUS,” an unreleased Gaga-and-Kendrick Lamar project whose history became tangled with material heard during Gaga’s artRAVE tour. None of those labels changes the documented authorship of “Hologram.”
A rights-data transcription based on Brazil’s ECAD database likewise identifies Furler and Garibay as the composers and lists Garibay Music Publishing and Warner-Tamerlane among the publishing interests. The ECAD-referenced entry is not a substitute for the film’s primary credits, but it independently supports the same two-writer attribution.
Garibay’s presence helps explain why listeners heard a family resemblance to other productions associated with him. It does not prove that one artist copied another. Producers routinely reuse favored patches, rhythmic devices and pieces of unfinished production architecture; songs can also be rewritten, repitched or built from the same session material. Without session files, contracts or an on-record account from the participants, the exact direction of any musical borrowing between “Hologram” and versions of “PARTYNAUSEOUS” remains unresolved.
Why the Gaga theory persisted
The comparison was encouraged by the internet’s habit of treating sonic resemblance as a complete chain of custody. Fan discussions noticed comparable electronic textures, structural gestures and vocal effects. A 2016 forum thread framed the question as whether Sia had copied Gaga, while later arguments proposed the reverse or suggested that Garibay had repurposed production.
What can responsibly be said is narrower. Garibay worked with Gaga during the period surrounding Born This Way and later participated in material connected by fans to the unfinished ARTPOP world. He also co-wrote and produced “Hologram.” That makes a shared production lineage plausible. It does not establish plagiarism, nor does it place Gaga in the “Hologram” credits.
The chronology is also less decisive than it first appears. A recording’s leak date is not necessarily its composition date. Sia’s vocal reaching the public in April 2016 tells us when outsiders heard it, not when Furler and Garibay wrote or recorded it. Similarly, snippets performed on tour or files circulating among collectors may represent different revisions. Assertions that one version “came first” require documentation unavailable in the public record.
The safest conclusion is therefore that “Hologram” and the material compared with it may share Garibay’s creative DNA, while the specific claims of copying remain fan interpretation. The official Vox Lux credits settle the authorship of the released song but not the private genealogy of every sound in its arrangement.
The song’s role inside Vox Lux
In Vox Lux, “Hologram” belongs to Celeste, a fictional pop star whose career turns trauma into spectacle. Cassidy plays the younger Celeste and also Celeste’s daughter, Albertine; Natalie Portman portrays the adult star. Neon’s synopsis describes a story spanning 18 years, from a 1999 tragedy to a 2017 arena-scale comeback.
The song’s imagery—an apparently solid lover revealed as an illusion—fits that film particularly well. This is interpretation rather than production history, but the metaphor resonates beyond a failed relationship. Corbet’s Celeste is herself a projection assembled from publicity, grief, choreography and audience desire. A “hologram” is visible yet intangible, a useful emblem for celebrity in a film preoccupied with the distance between a person and a pop persona.
Cassidy’s comparatively youthful delivery also changes the song’s dramatic function. Sia’s leaked vocal sounded like a writer demonstrating the emotional and melodic possibilities of a composition. Cassidy’s authorized version is character work: a fictional early-career recording situated inside Celeste’s manufactured rise. That difference is why calling the soundtrack track a “Sia single” is misleading even though Sia co-wrote it and her demo had already circulated.
The broader soundtrack makes this division clear. Portman and Cassidy sing songs written or co-written by Sia, while Scott Walker supplies the score. The soundtrack release report lists Cassidy on “Hologram,” “Alive,” “Your Body Talk” and a version of “Wrapped Up”; Portman performs the adult Celeste material. The film’s contemporary title-design study further situates that music within Corbet’s deliberately unsettling account of pop stardom.
Release, leak and legacy
Three dates should not be collapsed. April 2016 marks the reported unauthorized circulation of Sia’s recording. September 4, 2018 marks Vox Lux’s Venice premiere. December 14, 2018 marks the soundtrack’s verified commercial release and therefore the cleanest release date for “Hologram (Smoke and Mirrors)” as an authorized recording.
The eventual release did not retroactively authorize the leaked Sia demo. Nor did it validate the names and collaboration claims attached to bootleg uploads. The legitimate recording remains Cassidy’s soundtrack performance, written by Sia and Garibay and produced by Garibay.
That outcome gives “Hologram” a revealing place in Sia’s songwriting catalogue. Like the songs gathered on This Is Acting, it demonstrates how a composition can exist apart from the celebrity voice most listeners associate with its author. But here the route was stranger: a stolen glimpse of the songwriter’s version created years of speculation before a fictional pop star supplied the song’s official identity. The illusion in the title ultimately became part of the song’s history—what listeners thought they possessed in 2016 was never the release itself.