Writers from numerous media outlets , including '' E! Online '' , '' Cosmopolitan '' , '' Variety '' , '' People '' magazine , concluded that the video was a tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting . The video opens with a low drone and cuts between shots of a fraught Maddie Ziegler smearing rainbow colors on her cheeks . She frees 48 other young people trapped in a cage ( 49 being the number of people killed in the shooting ) ; their freedom is short-lived , however . Later , a wall is seen riddled with bullet holes as everyone falls to the ground , and tears stream down Ziegler 's face . Kornhaber wrote : Absent of any social context , it 's all striking and beautiful and ineffably sad . With the knowledge that it was inspired by queer youths and friends gunned down in the act of coming together and enjoying themselves , it becomes almost unbearably poignant . Sia keeps singing about having stamina ; Kendrick Lamar 's verse , omitted from the video , is all about surviving adversity and haters . What ’s so potent about the video — and so specifically awful about this massacre — is that its subjects do seem to have struggled and triumphed to find the freedom to flip out together , and they are still cut down . It 's bookended by Ziegler crying : As is appropriate , there 's no take-home moral to make what happened seem okay . On 7 September 2016 , Sia , Ziegler and several other dancers performed " The Greatest " live for the first time at the 2016 Apple launch of the iPhone 7 at San Francisco 's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium . Sia and Ziegler performed the song during her performance at the 2016 iHeartRadio Music Festival on 23 September 2016 . The song is included on Sia 's Nostalgic for the Present Tour
Orlando nightclub shooting
Orlando nightclub shooting
The Greatest (Sia song)