Sky Ferreira has long been targeted by the press and areas of the music industry as a source of controversy for her firebrand behaviour and honesty. It has created a toxic cycle difficult to escape and a reputation that has often overshadowed the strength of her art and damaged her prolificacy. However, in a world often blinded by click bait narratives, it is easy to see how quickly a young artist can get swallowed up in controversy without ever doing much to deserve it in the first place, especially when said controversy can add to an artists stock and sell more units. Who stands to earn the most when a situation like this unfolds? Well perhaps if you are an independent artist that owns your own output it can be argued that you do, however if like Sky Ferreira you are signed to a major label that owns 80% of your entire catalogue, it’s likely that the label has more to gain.

In a recent interview with the Guardian the singer songwriter from Los Angeles commented on how the label often used her fragility and highly publicised drug use as a means of getting their own way and exploiting her “They’d say I’m crazy, I’m mentally ill, I’m difficult, I’m unprofessional – oh, I’m a drug addict. That’s by far everyone’s go-to. Troubled women. You can do whatever you want if they’re not like, save-me troubled. It was like the label almost wanted those things to be true about me so they could exploit it and use them as ways to sell”. Interviewer Laura Snapes noted that Ferreira “doesn’t seem well” and that it was “not comfortable to witness” but later went on to say that her erratic behaviour seemed “less like the trait of an unreliable narrator than a woman who has frequently been made to doubt her own reality“.

It’s an all too familiar story in an industry that often does more to perpetuate an artists personal struggles than it does to help them. However it is at least comforting to note that Sky is beginning to emerge again, with her first single in years “Don’t Forget” being released back in May, it seems that at least some movement is being made towards her highly anticipated new album Masochism. You can check it out here: