Sky Ferreira Returns? We’ve Heard This Song Before
Unpacking the forever-embattled pop singer’s new single, “Leash”
In 2019, I edited a cover story for Pitchfork called “Sky Ferreira Returns.” The profile, by Camille Dodero, is raw, fun, and a little harrowing. It begins with Sky showing up to a restaurant, immediately retreating to the restroom for a half hour, and then emerging with wet eyes, before it delves deep into the forever-put-upon pop star’s story of being held captive by the major label machine as well as her own doubts and perfectionism. In the years since, though, I’ve come to think of that piece’s headline in particular as a punchline. Wishful thinking. At the time, Sky was releasing an eerie track called “Downhill Lullaby,” her first single since her brilliant 2013 debut album, Night Time, My Time, and (allegedly) the first track from its follow-up, Masochism. After years of delays—she originally promised that Masochism’s lead single would hit in 2015—things finally seemed to be happening. The story also teased another new song, “Don’t Forget,” which I had actually heard with my own ears. It existed. And back then, Sky swore that Masochism was coming in 2019, too.
It’s almost 2025. Still no Masochism. To be fair, “Downhill Lullaby” did come out around the same time as that cover story. “Don’t Forget” came out too—three years later, in May 2022. Since then, there’s been no more new Sky music. Until this week.
“Leash” is the 32-year-old’s first release as an independent artist, after her longtime nemesis, Capitol Records, dropped her late last year. For better or worse, it is not being billed as another supposed single from Masochism. The song was created specifically for the new A24 movie Babygirl, in which Nicole Kidman plays a self-destructive CEO who has an affair with her intern. According to Sky, the song’s message of liberation is a conflation of Babygirl’s themes and her own history with the music industry. This is becoming an unfortunate theme: All three of Sky’s most recent songs are easy to interpret as restless cries for help from a person who has been taken advantage of by forces beyond their control. You can’t help but feel for her. But by now, especially since she doesn’t have Capitol as an antagonistic force to push up against anymore, it can seem like Sky is being stymied by her own victimization more than anything else. “It feels liberating, but I’m honestly still angry about the situation,” she told Vogue this week, talking about how she was dropped from the label that signed her when she was 15. “It’s kinda like when someone gets out of prison and they don’t know what to do with themselves.”
It doesn’t help that “Leash” is a garbling mess, overflowing with shoegaze swirls, Depeche Mode drums, distracting vocal effects that make it seem like Sky is singing into a corroded walkie-talkie, and an out-of-nowhere outro guitar part that sounds like it’s being piped in from another song entirely (possibly Filter’s 1999 fake-Nine Inch Nails hit “Hey Man, Nice Shot”). Sky completed the song alongside co-producer Jorge Elbrecht, who has worked on all of her underwhelming post-Night Time tracks, in two-and-a-half weeks. For almost any other musician, this would be a reasonable amount of time. But for an infamously meticulous artist like Sky—who has, lest I remind you, now released just three songs in the last nine years—it may as well have been two-and-a-half seconds. The relative mad dash comes through on the recording, a jumble of ideas that still needs to be pruned back and focused. There’s even a quick bit in the middle of the song where she randomly counts down from five to one, as if holding a place for an actual lyric that never came. “Blood was on the wall/We always knew I’d let you down,” she sings on the hook, before shrugging into nihilism. “Surrender to the master/In the end, nothing matters.” It’s frustrating and sad.
Sky is now saying Masochism will come out next year—that is, if she can figure out how to get the music back from Capitol. As much as I’m rooting for her, I’m also finding it harder and harder to care about her continued plight. As a palate cleanser, after listening to “Leash” a few times, I went back to Night Time. It still hits. Which makes songs like “Don’t Forget” and “Leash” even more annoying—they mine some of the same references that her debut album does, but to a severely blunted effect. Take a song like Night Time’s “24 Hours”—there are ’80s synth squelches and a sturdy beat, but there’s also space and tension and an actual hook. “I wish these 24 hours would never end,” she sang on that song, about wanting to be stuck in a day with someone before they have to go. “Oh, in these 24 hours, wish the clock had no hand.” In reality, that’s not how time works. It keeps moving. It leaves us behind.
