Sky Ferreira – Everything Is Embarrassing (Unicorn Kid Remix) by Sky Ferreira Official

Tell us about your change of direction since ‘One‘.

I got signed when I was 15, and I had a lot of people telling me what I should do, and I didn’t necessarily agree with it but I was like, “I guess I’ll try it”. After ‘One’, they were like, “Oh your song didn’t do well…” It got attention, but it didn’t sell anything, which was actually for the best, because I don’t think I really wanted to make that kind of music to begin with.

It was a great track though.

It was a great track – totally. I don’t regret it.

Tell us how you hooked up with Dev Hynes for ‘Everything Is Embarrassing‘.

I met Dev Hynes through mutual friends. We were always trying to work together. My publicist sent it to Pitchfork and they posted it and made it best new track, and it got traction from there.

Your album will be dropping later this year. You’re like a Cassie figure – the longer you’ve been away, the more the mystique and expectation have built.

Yeah, that’s why I have to make sure it’s good! Some people might be disappointed because it’s not ‘One’ or ‘Obsession’, but there are still a lot of pop elements in it. It’s a lot more guitar driven, there are acoustic songs and it’s very stripped down. A lazy, easy comparison would be Blondie.

Who have you been collaborating with on this one?

I worked with Jon Brion on half of it and then Ariel Rechtshaid on the other half. Ariel produced that Usher’s song ‘Climax’, which is completely different to what we’re doing, and then he did Vampire Weekend. Jon Brion did Elliott Smith and Fiona Apple.

I was going to say that some of your new work has a bit of an early Fiona Apple feel to it.

Yeah she’s a really big influence – always was. She was my number one idol as a kid. I’ve seen her play like 10 times, and I cried the second time. I cried at the front.

It was so embarrassing!

Discreet tears or full-on sobs?

I wasn’t sobbing. Definitely tears though!

A lot of your artwork and videos remind me of a young Vanessa Paradis.

Yeah, and Nastassja Kinski is a very big person for me. Vanessa Paradis as a teenager! She’s still glamorous. I love all that look of French girls, like Brigitte Bardot.

How did you get approached to be the face of Saint Laurent Paris?

Hedi Slimane and I met a few years ago, and always kept in touch. He took photos of me for his diary, then he did my artwork, and then asked me to do Saint Laurent. So yeah!

You’re touring North America with How To Dress Well. Great combo.

Yeah it’s going to be a cool tour I think. We have mutual friends, and we like each other’s music. We thought it’d be a fun tour.

What’s your go-to album at the moment?

Kendrick Lamar. That’s my favourite album of last year. I love his music, but I think it’s also the LA in me. I’m from Venice Beach. When I listen to him, I’m like “LA! Yay – repping the West Coast finally.”

Are you off to some Paris fashion shows whilst you’re here in Europe?

Yeah. I skipped New York fashion week this time, but I’m going to Givenchy and Saint Laurent next week. Riccardo Tisci was one of the first people – even during my whole break – who had me play his parties. He’s really supportive. And I’m playing a show at Silencio, David Lynch’s nightclub there.

Tell us what it’s like shooting with Mario Testino, Terry Richardson and Hedi Slimane.

They’re all quite different. Hedi’s thing is quite intimate, you know, and then Terry is just like my friend. We just hang out.

Is he still getting his dick out all the time?

I think he’s stopped that – too much commercial work! And Testino’s a bit more glamorous. That’s like shooting like a diva.

Sky Ferreira’s EP Everything is Embarrassing will be released 8th April on Polydor. She plays tonight at White Heat and tomorrow at XOYO, London. skyferreira.tumblr.com

Words: Stuart Brumfitt

The post SKY FERREIRA: Interview plus 'Everything Is Embarrassing (Unicorn Kid remix)' appeared first on Wonderland.

Even amongst the glitterati of New York where the toast of the town changes from night-to-night if not hour-to-hour, the current buzz surrounding Sky Ferreira is incessant. The LA-born bombshell moved to the Big Apple last year and has been taking the city by storm with her flamboyant Latin-American looks, her never-ending energy and a burgeoning music career that is already receiving masses of attention even though her debut album is yet to be released.

She’s become a mainstay of CK One’s recent ad campaigns, appeared in Uffie’s video for ‘Pop The Glock’, played a cameo role in Matthew Porterfield’s drama Putty Hill singing (‘I Will Always Love You’) and somewhat less elegantly, starred in Justice’s tour documentary A Cross The World.

“Ugh, they made me look like their fucking groupie,” she snaps of that now-infamous scene where she’s filmed drunkenly belting out the French duo’s hit ‘We Are Your Friends’ a cappella on a dressing room floor. Aside from these on-film appearances, Ferreira also boasts a bulging portfolio of magazine articles, blog posts and Lolita-chic fashion shoots that would make professional models twice her age envious.

As she meets Wonderland in the lobby of the trendy Bowery Hotel in downtown Manhattan, it’s not hard to see Ferreira’s appeal. Even in a varsity t-shirt, spring jacket and boots, her striking looks stick out a mile even in the dimly lit bar area. Such effortless style and beauty has undoubtedly opened numerous doors for her, but Ferreira shows an open disdain for her reputation as an arch-scenester, a socialite with inflated film-star aspirations or worse still, a debauched band-aid. The reality is apparently far more mundane.

“The bizarre thing is that I really don’t go out all that often – I stick to the same five people most of the time,” she explains gesticulating wildly to underline her point. “It’s just when I do go out, there’s always someone there to take a picture and then it just looks like you’re partying when in reality, I was probably just stopping by to see a friend. I’m not a needy person. I like to spend a lot of time by myself.”

She wrote her first songs when she was just an infant (“at least, I thought they were songs” she laughs) but like most kids, the teenage years were when Ferreira’s real tastes began to blossom. Using Myspace as her platform, Ferriera then started to upload her own music and began an almost unnervingly persistent campaign of contacting producers and songwriters in the hope of pestering them until they would agree to work with her.

“I am the sort of person that will push and push until I get what I want,” she sniggers and to her credit, it’s an approach that paid off. Almost immediately, Swedish duo Bloodshy & Avant (who were responsible for Britney Spears’ career-defining ‘Toxic‘, and have also written and produced for Jennifer Lopez, Kelis, Kylie Minogue and Miike Snow) saw the potential that the 15-year-old Ferreira had and agreed to a collaboration that would eventually produce her debut single ‘One‘. Not satisfied with that score, she also enlisted the likes of Greg Kurstin, Colin Munroe, Nicole Morier and even Linda Perry to work on an album’s worth of songs before finally signing to EMI in 2009.

Another reason that Ferreira has felt the wrath of the blogosphere is her forthright approach to sexuality. Aside from being an obvious object of desire for the world’s seedier population, she’s spoken honestly about her attraction to older men – on As If! track ‘108’ she teases: “My secret lover is 108 / I know it sounds insane / it’s really OK”. She also caused an uproar when a picture of her posing with a bottle of vodka between her legs found its way on to Katy Perry’s Twitter feed. The lead track from As If! EP, ‘Sex Rules’ only furthers that overtly sexualized image that Ferreira has built up but again, it’s something that she regards with incredulousness rather than regret.

“I’m not a raging slut! I’ve actually only been with one person in my whole life who’s been my boyfriend for two years. But being sexually active at that age is more normal than a lot of people want to believe. To me, ‘Sex Rules’ is funny and playful. That was my intention at least, especially with those lines about using ‘your God given tools.’ I wrote it with Billy Steinberg who wrote ‘Like A Virgin’ and ‘I Touch Myself’, so he has this lineage of racy songs. I couldn’t ignore his history. It would be like getting the world’s best guitarist to guest on your album and asking him to play the trumpet!”

As the interview slowly winds down to a close, we can’t help but notice that Ferreira’s attention is already being drawn to another area of the Bowery’s plush bar area and that she’s keen to move on. The world, it would seem, waits for no woman, especially one with as much enterprise and determination as her.

But before disappearing, she makes it clear once and for all that for the most part, the tabloid version of Sky Ferreira is a myth that needs to be vanquished. And she has the tools to do it too. “The only way to really get past all the things people say about me or the ideas that they have is the music. If it’s good enough and it can’t be denied then things will change. There’s no other way to prove it. My music has always been my priority… and it always will be.”

Photography: Matt Irwin
Fashion: Lester Garcia
Words: Hardeep Phull

This article first appeared in Wonderland Issue 26, April/May 2011

The post FLASHBACK FRIDAY: Sky Ferreira interview, April/May 2011 appeared first on Wonderland.