Sky Ferreira is “working” on taking back ownership of songs after label dropped her
Sky Ferreira is “working” on taking back ownership of her songs after her label Capitol Records dropped her in a move she described as “impersonal”.
The pop singer was interviewed by Vogue, who shared the piece yesterday (December 2). Ferreira was interviewed about her upcoming song for A24 film Babygirl, which stars Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson. The song ‘Leash’ will be released on streaming platforms this Thursday (December 5).
She also addressed her current life as an independent artist – in November 2023, it was reported that Ferreira’s name was removed from the Capitol Records roster on their official website. The artist only released one album under the label, 2013’s ‘Night Time, My Time’, which has since become a cult favourite among fans, including Charli XCX.
Ferreira told Vogue‘s Keaton Bell: “[Capitol Records] kept me from putting out new music for 10 years as a way of making me look like I’m incapable of it,” Ferreira says. “I’m able to do a song for an A24 film after all this time because that first album clearly meant something to people.”
It was on the 10-year anniversary of ‘Night Time, My Time’, she revealed, that Capitol left her an “automated message that got forwarded to me” on a weekend informing her of her release “after months of not hearing back from them”.
“I’m still trying to figure out the words I can use to talk about it that won’t get me in trouble,” she cautioned. “But I also don’t really care about getting in trouble, because what else can they really do to me at this point?”
“My relationship with them was obviously a bit fraught, and it’s never been very simple to explain. But to let me know I’ve been dropped from the label in such an impersonal way was clearly so personal.” She revealed that she is still “honestly still angry” over it and that the message left her “catatonic for a few weeks”.
She continued: “I was already dreading the 10-year anniversary of my album because it’s sad. I should be able to celebrate something like that because as long as this album has been around, people still care about it… It shouldn’t have to remind me of another year of being trapped in a mess that I didn’t create.”
“They want me to look responsible by dragging it out and blocking me from releasing music even after already being blocked from so many other opportunities because of them.”
She then revealed that she is currently “working to try and get some of those songs back” from Capitol – not all, she added, even though she “paid for all of my studio sessions”. NME has reached out to Capitol Records for comment.
“People keep telling me I should just re-record the songs and it’s like, yeah, Taylor Swift can do that because she’s a billionaire, but I basically put all the money I’ve ever made as an artist back into making music,” she continued.
“I think most musicians I know generally pay to work. But I am following up “Leash” with another song right afterwards—some time early next year—because I don’t want it to seem like some random one-off. Because that’s another thing, Capitol would’ve never let me do something like this Babygirl song.”
She described her management by Capitol as “blatant sabotage” and that she “was basically set up to fail” when they allegedly tried to block the release of the music video for 2022 song ‘Don’t Forget’.
Ferreira has been open about her displeasure with Capitol Records over the years – in 2023, she expressed her frustration at being seen as a “difficult” artist over the lack of new music that she affirmed has been recorded.
‘Masochism’, the follow-up to the Ferreira’s 2013 debut LP ‘Night Time, My Time’, was first scheduled for release back in 2015. After several delays, though, the album is still yet to receive a formal release date.
Last year, anonymous fans paid to display a billboard that read “Free Sky Ferreira” in New York’s Times Square. She shared a picture of the billboard with the caption: “It’s true”. A month later, fans flew a banner reading the same message over the Capitol Records building in Los Angeles.
On her tumultuous relationship with Capitol Records, Ferreira told NME in 2022: “It just goes in circles trying to gain respect, I guess,” she said of the drama behind-the-scenes.
Experiencing career difficulties in public, she explained, feels “almost like someone peeling you apart by your skin, a little. Slowly, but it’s happening – and then it’s too late. I’m almost out of it, but I do feel a bit like whack-a-mole or something. I’m almost out of this dark hole, and then it’s like ‘BONK!’”.
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Daniel Peters
NME
