Artists like Kesha, Jojo Levesque, Megan Thee Stallion, and of course, Taylor Swift, have all waged high-profile wars against their draconian labels, but this writer is going to go out on a limb and assume none of those artists got a crowdfunded billboard in Time Square for their struggles. Sky Ferreira did. (It read "Free Sky Ferreira.") After pouring most of her own modeling money into recording sessions because the label didn't like the direction she was going, Ferreira managed to release her now-seminal indie-grunge album Night Time, My Time under Capitol in 2013. And then—through no fault of her own—she essentially went dark for the next 10 years with only a single here and there as she fought the label to actually release her followup record, Masochism.
Now, Ferreira is finally free—dropped via automated message on the ten-year anniversary of Night Time—and has a new song, "Leash," coming out for Halina Reijn's Babygirl. But while her new-found freedom feels "liberating," she's "honestly still angry about the situation," as she told Vogue in a recent interview. "I was catatonic for a few weeks after that email. Not because I was dropped, but just the way it happened. It felt like their way of trying to break my spirit one last time. It’s kinda like when someone gets out of prison and they don’t know what to do with themselves."
Unlike Taylor Swift, Ferreira can't hit back immediately by re-recording and reclaiming her lost tracks, all of which are still owned by Capitol. "I’m not getting every single one," she explained. "It’s such a complicated process and I have to figure out how to do all this shit by myself now. 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. I think most musicians I know generally pay to work."
But don't worry Ferreira fans—she says she’s here to stay. The artist is following up "Leash" with another song right afterwards, so the A24 track doesn't feel like "some random one-off." ("Capitol would’ve never let me do something like this Babygirl song," she added.)
While she hasn't been given the freedom to take a more traditional path in her career, Ferreira isn't trying to bring any doubts into this long-awaited next chapter. "I don’t regret what I’ve done musically. At the end of the day, what you make is what sticks. If it’s true to you, then it’s going to be true to other people," she told the Los Angeles Times. "It’s changed so much sonically because my life keeps changing. When I get past the ‘What potentially could have been,’ or ‘What it should have been,’ it’s like, ‘Well, I guess this is what it’s going to be.’"
"Leash" is out December 6.
