Sky Ferreira On Her New Album, That Whole Drug Thing, And Being Excessively Honest

“I always feel weird and intrigued seeing photos or videos of Sky Ferreira doing her job of being a pop star, because she feels like one of us,” wrote Rookie brains Tavi Gevinson in an ol’ interview with Sky Ferreira that served as many folks’ introduction to the singer. And while that “one of us” was probably not meant to apply to OLD MEN like myself, the line instantly got to the heart of Ferreira’s appeal.

The 21-year-old singer’s rise to stardom has been full of stops-and-starts. Before 2012’s ‘Everything Is Embarrassing‘ turned her into a Serious Blog hit, Ferreira was courting major label hype as a 14-year-old with impressive MySpace posts. “I was told it was never going to happen because I couldn’t meet their standards — but their standards are just terrible,” she’s since said about the failed attempts to make her “the new Britney”.

Somehow, she stayed on people’s radars, mainly by posting fun shit on Tumblr (David Lynch clips, pictures of Judge Judy, you know the usual), and catching the approving eye of fancy fashion types like Hedi Slimane and Terry Richardson. That same likable vibe that filled up her online accounts is all over her new album Night Time, My Time, which features the kinda songs that’ll make you air-drum while she’s casually yelling out some personal pain (“equal parts self-loathing and redemption,” as one review more eloquently put it).

We caught up with Sky over the phone from L.A., where — dripping sarcasm a mile-a-minute, like some strange meeting of Shoshanna from Girls and Daria — she discussed her intimate approach to songwriting, and spoke candidly about a year of controversies, where she hit the headlines as much for a NSFW album cover and an ill-timed drug arrest as she did for her music.

–

Junkee: Congratulations on the album. There’s surprisingly little overlap with the Ghost EP that came out early last year. Are you just constantly writing?
Sky Ferreira: No, well, the thing is I always find that I tend to write best when I’m just having fun — that was the awesome thing about when I started, it wasn’t so much like a job. Even though there was pressure behind it and stuff, it felt good and I remember it not being like a job for a minute.

So you’re already feeling pressure to deliver something for the next album?
Noooooo… It’s just, like, I’m easily distracted or something.

What’s the new music sounding like?
Um, I don’t know… It’s a bit all over the place. I feel like my lyrics are always kind of in the same headspace, but I kinda also wanna try different things. Like, I did something with Ariel Pink yesterday, and it just really fit somehow. There was no pressure behind it, it wasn’t weird, it’s just fun, like hanging out.

Your lyrics tend to have a really confessional tone to them, sometimes excessively so.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of people have formulas or something — it’s easy to freak out when that’s not working, so I never really wanna find an exact formula to writing songs. But, like, the only thing I really know — and it’s more like a general life rule — is being honest. I just wanna write stuff the way I talk — I don’t wanna sound like a different person, I don’t wanna pretend to be something in a song. I don’t really know how to explain it besides that.

Do you ever have second thoughts about getting too personal, maybe being too honest?
I mean, it hurts sometimes, obviously, because it brings up a lot of stuff I’ve experienced and I feel sad and it makes me angry. But I feel like its the only way for people to somewhat get to know me or even appreciate me as a person moreso than just some weird thing they’ve made up in their mind about me from pictures. I also wanna show that I’m not like a complete idiot or something, I don’t know (laughs).

You seem to be pretty open in interviews and on social media, like on your Tumblr and Instagram. Is that the same thinking that’s behind the music?
Yeah, I mean, I’m just an honest person — sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes it does not work in my favour. As time goes on, I’m learning that, like, me not writing about everything I’m pissed about on the internet is probably the best idea. And not just because “it’s the best idea”, but because me bitching about things on fucking Twitter takes attention away from what I’m trying to do which is, like, trying to create… stuff. You know, my privacy is slowly, slowly going away (laughs), so I don’t really wanna contribute to that.

Surely that’s something you experienced earlier on in your career? Your whole life’s pretty much been aiming for the spotlight, to some extent.
I mean, I’ve always gotten attention for who I was, or not even who I was, but… I don’t know. I’m just one of those people; I don’t know how to explain it. Like, sometimes I make people really angry without having to do anything; I notice people either like me or they really can’t stand me. It’s one of those situations (laughs).

That album cover seemed like a fairly provocative move. You must’ve been aware of the kinda reaction it would receive?
No! I definitely wasn’t going for anything like, “Oh, I’m gonna shock people!”. I don’t see anything wrong with being provocative, because pop music is provocative, but the nudity wasn’t really on my mind when I was doing it. I was like, “Fine, I might get a little shit for this on some blogs…”, but I didn’t know it was gonna be everywhere and people were gonna report on it. I mean, I could’ve put text over my chest ‘cause it wasn’t necessarily nudity that I was going for. But the thing is with Gaspar [Noe; the photographer and famed director] and I, we tried it with me wearing clothes in the shower and it just looked fucking weird; nobody showers with their clothes on. I feel like that would’ve been more Girls Gone Wild.

You had a great line in an interview where you said, “My face in that picture says more than my left nipple…”
Yeah, exactly! That’s kinda how I feel about the whole thing. I’m a bit confused by it: the cover is not sexy, it’s all in my face. When I shot that cover, it was right when I was recording ‘Nobody Asked Me If I’m Okay’, ‘I Blame Myself’, all those kinda songs, so that was where my headspace was. Originally, I had an album cover where I was very, like, “pretty” or whatever, but that’s not what I wanted.

You’ve done pretty well to handle the media hoopla around this kinda stuff, even with that whole drug bust thing. Have you had to deal with much repercussion from that?
Yeah, I have! Like, it’s a lot more scandalous when I do it, than a guy in a band. You know, Cole’s [Zachary Cole Smith; frontman of indie band DIIV and Sky’s rumoured dude] in a rock band, he just looks like a rockstar when he does it, or something. When I do it, it’s like ‘Blonde pop girl goes wild!’. People don’t really know what happened with the whole thing and obviously I can’t go into details about it, “legally” or whatever, but it’s a lot more interesting and crazier on paper. It was a wrong place, wrong time-type situation for me. But, you know, I have to deal with it — I’ve, like, lost contracts and shit because people don’t want to be attached to something like that.

Are you wary about getting any bigger, drawing any more attention to yourself?
Well, yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, my drug arrest is not relevant. I guess I could be considered a “bad influence” on people and I’m not saying that people should go and do drugs, but really, it’s not relevant, it doesn’t affect anyone else’s life. I feel like music, obviously, affects people’s lives way stronger. That stuff is all bullshit, the music isn’t.

–

Browser History

And then we decided to invade Sky’s privacy further by getting her to reveal her recent browser history. Geez, these guys! (points at self)

Last website you visited?
“Oh, The Atlantic.com. I read an article called ‘Whatever Happened To Kel From Kenan & Kel — As Explained By Kel‘ [the mid-’00s Nickelodeon show]. Poor Kel, orange soda!”

–

Last song you streamed?
“It must’ve been some shit that I saw on a blog or something. Oh yeah, I listened to the whole Connan Mockasin album; that’s probably the last new thing I really liked.”

–

Last Google Image search you made?
“Oh… Um… Uh, okay, god. It was “stabbed girl”. There was this girl who took a selfie after she got stabbed, and I was trying to find it for someone. It was, like, a photo of a teenager, and her leg is completely stabbed, and the hashtag is ‘#stabbed’. And it has a sadface, too. I found her Instagram; in the next picture she just goes back to taking photos of her Starbucks cup.”

–

Last YouTube clip you watched?
“I’ve been listening to a lot of Psychic TV recently. I don’t know which video exactly, but it was definitely one of their things.”

–

Last thing you bid on on eBay?
“Oh, I kinda made myself sign out of eBay; I haven’t used it for months. I used to take sleeping medicine, but instead of going to sleep I would go on eBay and buy tons of weird shit and not remember it in the morning. One time, I bought a Furby, and the delivery guy showed up at my house and I was like, ‘Um, what the fuck?’ But yeah, it turns out I definitely bought a Furby in the middle of the night.”

–

Sky Ferreira’s Night Time, My Time is out through Capitol Records on January 31. The first single ‘You’re Not The One’ is out now.

–