From a young age, Sky Ferreira wanted to dedicate himself to music. Encouraged by Michael Jackson, whom she treated personally because her grandmother was her hairdresser for three decades, at 13 she joined a gospel choir and took opera classes. Like Lily Allen or Adele did, shortly afterward she began posting songs on MySpace. And in 2009, just before she turned 15, she signed her first record deal with Capitol Records. The label did not hesitate to sign her because they saw in her a kind of Britney Spears for Generation Z, a new heroine of danceable and pubescent pop. However, the plan soon fell apart. The three songs she recorded in 2010 (17, Obsession and One) went unnoticed on the sales charts. And the same thing happened in 2011 with As If!an EP produced by industry greats such as the Swedish duo Bloodshy & Avant or the American Greg Kurstin.
“From going to school I went on to get on planes to see various producers and be a little ‘used’. I did this to escape school and was treated much worse. Because I didn’t believe in the music I was creating, it was difficult. “I felt like she was the worst person who ever lived,” she would confess in Guardian a little later about how they tried to mold it into a prefabricated product. The tables turned in 2012 with the edition of Ghosttheir second EP: with the song Everything Is Embarrassing, composed by herself along with Ariel Rechtshaid and Dev Hynes (also known as Blood Orange), for the first time earned the respect of the public and the specialized press. Capitol Records was against releasing it as a single because it did not believe in its potential and it was not a track-breaker. But, reluctantly, he agreed to do it at the artist’s insistence. Even today, it remains her biggest hit. “I don’t think they would like to look stupid and have a 20-year-old girl beat them at her own game,” remembered last year about it. The revenge of his record company was immediate. Far from praising her for that success, she gave her a period of two weeks to deliver Night Time, My Time, his first studio album, without providing him with even a sad extra penny to finish it. The reason? Having invested large sums of money previously, she considered that her time to become a pop star had already expired.
A career as a model
Ferreira had no choice but to finance it out of her own pocket with what she was then earning as a model. Since 2010, thanks to Tumblr and his androgynous appearance, offers have not stopped flooding him. Without going any further, she starred in several campaigns for Calvin Klein or Adidas, she was the muse of Hedi Slimane (he chose her for the Saint Laurent fall pre-collection in 2013), Riccardo Tisci and Jeremy Scott, and she used to allow herself to be photographed by the now canceled Terry Richardson. “It’s more than a hobby, obviously, because I get money for it, but it’s a big part of my life. “I see it all connected,” she declared to Rolling Stone. And he added: “These people were the ones who helped me make myself known more. They were helping me financially because they were supporting me, and also helping me get my music out there and supporting it. I didn’t have to change because of fashion. Many think it is much more superficial and empty. But, ironically, with music everyone wants to change me. With fashion, they love me for who I am.”
Posted on October 29, 2013, Night Time, My Time It was a slap in the face to his record company. Produced by Ariel Rechtshaid, and with a provocative cover signed by the filmmaker Gaspar Noé, it contained songs that could have been signed by The Velvet Underground (Kristine), motorik rhythms typical of a krautrock band (Omanko) and infectious choruses camouflaged between guitars just as dirty as saturated (Heavy Metal Heart). In short, it was the opposite of what was expected from a pop promise. The music press, as expected, praised him unmitigatedly. And, over time, it became a cult album: influential media such as Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Spin, Stereogum and Billboard included it in the lists of the best albums of that decade. Although it did not make a deep impact commercially (in the United States it shipped just over 39,000 copies), Ferreira achieved something much more complicated: that the world took her seriously as an artist.
The controversy in which she was immersed a few weeks before the album hit stores undoubtedly affected both sales and her own image. The events occurred in mid-September 2013, hours after she walked for Marc Jacobs. Ferreira and his then-partner, Zachary Cole Smith, the leader of the DIIV gang, were arrested in New York after running several traffic signs. Inside the vehicle the police found 42 bags of heroin and several ecstasy pills. The license plate was also stolen. The charges against Ferreira were dropped. However, most of the media ignored that information. “I’ve never been a fucking drug addict. “They gave me a test that day and I showed that she was not on drugs, but no one mentions that part,” she stated on the pages of NME.
The damage was already done. Although brands like Maison Kitsuné continued to trust her, her projection as a model stagnated. In an interview published by Stereogum In July 2014, Smith showed his regret: “I was stupid. I fucked it. It was entirely my fault and I screwed up my girlfriend’s life. She literally did nothing wrong. She was basically a passenger in someone’s car that was out of control for a minute. She splashed all the shit on him. Her career was screwed because everyone thought she was a drug addict, which she is not at all. That’s the worst part of it all for me. I screwed up but good.” From Night Time, My Time, Ferreira has collaborated with Primal Scream, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Charli XCX. She has also made her first steps as an actress, participating, for example, in the third season of Twin Peaks or the recently released Netflix production reptile. Although what is striking is that, since then, she has only released two of her own singles: Downhill Lullaby, in 2019, and Don’t Forget, in 2022. A decade after the first, their second album still does not have a release date set. The little that is known is that it will be titled Masochism (he announced it on April 6, 2015 on his now-deleted Twitter account) and that it is practically finished. “I don’t want people to think I haven’t even started the album or anything like that. Much of it is done. It’s just a matter of mixing, re-recording some parts, changing certain lyrics. Small details”, he assured him in May 2022 in Vulture.
What is the reason for the delay? For her there is only one culprit: Capitol Records. In July 2017, just as she discovered that she had Lyme disease, she wrote in instagram: “I have been quite silent about what is happening with my music for a number of reasons. Until now I have truly been at the mercy of other people and no matter how hard I tried, they were always superior to me. “I couldn’t say anything because of the possibility of making things worse.” In that post he revealed that “fortunately, a majority of those people are no longer part of my life and those problems have finally been solved. For the first time in a long time I have a musical team that supports me.” Years later, nothing has changed. Last January, Ferreira posted a video on the same social network in which he teased new music. She accompanied it with the phrase “I want to launch this” and a story in which he showed his frustration: “I’m in a difficult situation and I have to be ‘difficult’ to overcome it. I have to protect myself and my work somehow. If I’m not allowed to say something without consequences and the people who are supposed to do my job refuse to take care of me… How can I not be ‘difficult’?” Previously, in an interview he gave to Evening Standard, had already spoken about that “difficult artist” label that haunts him: “I have signed many stupid contracts that did not benefit me and had many loopholes or misleading language. They call you ‘difficult’ if you don’t want to sign certain things.”
His patient fans have not sat idly by. In August they organized to hire an advertisement in Times Square with the message Free Sky Ferreira and, in September, they paid for a plane to fly over the Capitol Records headquarters in Los Angeles with a banner bearing the same slogan. According to them, the artist “has been held hostage by her label for almost a decade” and they blame the record company for “blocking” the release of Masochism. Pending news, Ferreira will go on tour in the United States at the end of this month and, in March 2024, he has a dozen dates confirmed in the United Kingdom.
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