Sky Ferreira talks As If!, Sex Rules, New York, and her real name
March 22, 2011 by Bill Palmer · Leave a Comment
by Bill Palmer
“Take your music seriously, take your career seriously,” says the eighteen year old Calvin Klein model who just happens to be a deceptively talented singer-songwriter first and foremost. “But when someone takes themselves too seriously, no matter if you’re a musician or a doctor, it just brings the mood down.” Sky Ferreira is hoping listeners will pick up on the levity of her new EP, out the door today, which is why she’s titled it “As If!” and uses the five songs to playfully send up everything from anonymous internet haters to external interest in whom she might be dating to the number of songs out there which are all about sex but shy away from using that word.
Despite being born in the nineties, she makes no bones about the fact that the musical influences come from the decade before: Early Prince. Early Madonna. The first note of the first song on her new EP has an eighties synth tinge to it before she goes on to declare, matter of factly, that Sex Rules. The title of the song gives away the subject matter, a topic she doesn’t hesitate to tackle directly. “I think the thing that’s so funny about it is that it’s so straightforward when there’s so many other songs that are about it but in a nastier way most of the time, but it’s hidden with metaphors,” she says. “For example, Britney Spears, hit me baby one more time. What do people think that’s about? Wanna take a ride on your disco stick. What? It’s just kind of pointing out those things about it.”
But she adds that Sex Rules is “not supposed to be taken so seriously at all” with a laugh. “Especially that song because that’s not even in my character, to be honest.”
Sky (yes that’s her real name) first gained attention as a MySpace phenom a few years back before signing on with a major label and is now working toward the release of her first full length record. Having spent time on both the outside and inside of the music industry machine, she can see it from both sides. “I’m not talking about my record label,” she makes clear. But with regard to the industry machine in general, “there’s people that run it that don’t really understand the new wave coming out of music and how there’s different ways now than just radio airplay.”
But her days as a rising musician on the internet exposed her to the double edged sword of the online world as well. “Behind the keyboard, people talk so much shit on the internet that they would never say in real life,” she muses. “It’s just so weird to me, especially because it’s no face, it’s just a whole bunch of mean words.” The experiences informed her song Haters Anonymous, which sends up those who have nothing better to do than spend their time cyber-bullying. “I don’t know if it makes people feel better,” she ponders. “I don’t really get it.”
Elsewhere, two of her other news songs have numbers in their title in the form of 99 Tears and 108, continuing a pattern of her earlier singles entitled One and 17. So is her tendency to work numbers into her titles a sly attempt to inform the world that she’s a closeted math geek? No. “I’m terrible at math,” she says. “That’s the irony of it all. I think it’s just a habit of mine. I’ve got a thing for numbers, I guess.”
She’s also got a thing for the east coast, having bailed on her native Los Angeles in favor of New York City. The reasoning is straightforward: “I don’t have to drive, and all my friends are here.” Not that she’s necessarily given up on LA permanently. “That’s always gonna be my hometown I guess, so I’ll always love it. But right now at the moment I don’t want to live there.”
It’s not just the rise of her music career which has seen the artist known as Sky Ferreira answering questions as to whether that could possibly be her real first name – which, as it turns out, it is. “I’ve been hearing that my whole life,” she says of the assumption on the part of others that her first name must be a derivation of Skylar or Skye or some other such name. “My teachers would randomly call me Skylar when they would see it on the attendance list.”
So what of that era, back when schoolteachers were getting her name wrong and the world hadn’t yet been exposed to her music? “I was painfully shy back then,” she admits. “I’m still shy, but not like what I was.” In fact her current adult-leaning disposition is such that in conversation it’s easy to forget that you’re talking with someone who’s still technically high school age, which is something she’s aware of about herself. “I don’t feel like I’ve been wise beyond my years, but I’ve always felt a little bit more mature and I’ve always observed things a little more. In my head I’ve felt more like an adult than a child.”
Just home from a gig in Europe, Sky Ferreira says she’ll keep doing more shows this year but she’s more focused on getting her full length record out the door. The nature of the record? “I’m still figuring that out.” When might it arrive? “You never know,” she says more earnestly than playfully. In the mean time, fans will have to make due with her five new upbeat songs about sex, haters, numbers, and the human condition.
SkyFerreira.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook
Craigslist seller tries to get rid of his kids
April 24, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
A recent Craigslist listing from the “we can only hope he really was joking” category saw a man in Rochester, New York try to use the service to sell his own kids. After someone saw the listing and reported it, local authorities invested the matter and found the father to be claiming that the whole thing was just a joke. However, he may be in legal trouble anyway, for causing “public alarm” with the idiotic listing and may face a fine up to $1000 and may even go to jail. One has to wonder if perhaps the man’s kids would better off if they had in fact been sold to better parents.
Daniel Merriweather interview
February 28, 2010 by Bill Palmer · Leave a Comment
His debut album having already gone platinum worldwide in 2009 before it was even released in the U.S., Daniel Merriweather gets to do it all over again now that Love & War has finally landed in the States. Now a New Yorker himself, the native Australian who “grew up in a forest” is setting out on an American media blitz is support of what just might be the most old-school soul record so far this century – and he fills us in on the details…
Yeah, I did Conan, Jimmy Kimmel, I’ve done a couple. But Dave Letterman is takes the cake. When I was growing up in Australia I didn’t really have any late night TV, at least not on my four channels that I had at home, from America, except for Dave Letterman. So I grew up watching Dave Letterman since I was a kid. Even though if I was to judge these guys with everything being equal, maybe he wouldn’t necessarily be my favorite TV host, but because I’ve known who he was since I was ten, that’s like Michael Jackson to me. So I was so starstruck and nervous when I met him. It was kind of funny.
So you’ve been doing some stuff in the U.S., but Love & War is just coming out in the U.S. now. It’s been in out the UK for a long time.
Yeah, it’s been out in the UK for the last eight months. I’ve just been having so much fun traveling around and playing shows, I mean it’s just been incredible. What more could you ask for? My album just went platinum, and I’m so over the moon about it. So for me to be able to come to America finally, and be able to put my album out here, it’s like dream come true, you know?
Is it strange, though, to have spent last year proving yourself in in the UK and succeeding, and then coming here and in some ways kind of starting over?
I guess if you were looking at it like, you know, as if we were pastry chefs and it was like, why have I already learnt how to make pastry, but you guys are trying to teach me how to make pastry again? But we’re not pastry chefs. All I’m really doing is having fun. Whether or not people buy my album or not, whether or not there’s any level of monetary success, that’s not what I do this for, you know what I mean? It’s a childhood dream of mine, regardless of the ins and outs of it.
I listen to this album and I keep thinking “This guy must have listened to this or that artist as a kid” but I don’t want to make any assumptions, so what were you listening to growing up that you think helped shape your sound that you have now?
I grew up in a forest, and I never hung out with the cool kids and I was a bit of a loner, and I listened to kind of everything that I came across. I remember vividly listening to Faith No More, Mike Patton is one of my favorite singers. But then straight after that I’d put on Steve Wonder, Talking Book. Later on, when I was about fifteen, sixteen, D’Angelo was a massive influence on me. There’s just so many different artists that came within earshot that influenced me. I guess when I was recording my album I was listening to a whole lot of Otis Redding, and that’s really why, in a way, he’s probably one of the biggest influences on me now as a singer because there’s sort of an honesty, there’s a rawness to his voice that I don’t think anyone else really ever did. Stevie Wonder was a technician as much as he was a soul singer, but once you break into the nineties you’ve got Boyz II Men, they were my first CD that I ever bought when I was a kid. But that’s technician work. You listen to someone like Otis Redding or Howlin Wolf, and they really don’t give a fuck. It’s like I’m gonna sing and I’m gonna try to convey a thought and a feeling and if you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. So I think that’s kind of where I draw a lot of my inspiration.
Your hit single Red contains the line “You took something perfect and painted it red.” What does it mean to paint something red?
Painting something red is, you know when you buy a really nice table and it’s built well, and someone chopped down a tree to build the table, someone might have got splinters in their fingers from building the table, and then you went and bought this table and you brought it home so you could sit cups of coffee and stuff on it. Painting something red is like losing that beauty. Like if you took the table home, it’s beautiful man, it’s made out of wood, it’s amazing, why paint it red? And I think that was a metaphor for it. Red is the color of love, red’s the color of blood as well.
A lot of times you hear the phrase “painting the town red” which has a whole different meaning.
At one point I made a very bad mistake, I was just joking, and I’ll say it again now and I’m sure you’ll print it and take me out of context, but I said that the song was inspired by the menstrual cycle. I should have realized that that was a very grave mistake. I received a whole lot of letters about how awful that is to say.
Do you get a lot of that? Are you already getting pulled out of context on things? Are you already getting hit by the tabloids? I know the UK has vicious tabloids over there.
To be honest society itself is taking everything out out of context. There’s no such thing as the war on terror, you can’t have a a war against an idea. The war on terror is propaganda, you know? And the propaganda itself is the terror, not the thing that was in question. It’s like saying “I really hate bullies. You know how much I hate bullies? I’m gonna go out and whenever I see a bully, I’m gonna shove them.” It’s like come on, mate.
But I think taking things out of context is the media’s job, because it keeps life light and entertaining.
I know you’re traveling and touring all over the place, but what’s mostly your home now, New York? London?
New York’s definitely home. It’s an amazing city. From the moment I set foot in New York, I kind of knew that I wanted to be here. I think that it’s a beautiful place, But Melbourne, I’ve traveled the world, I’ve been to a whole bunch of different places, Melbourne’s in my top three cities in the world, and that’s taking a lot of cities into consideration. It’s an incredible place that taught me how to sing, taught me how to play, everything. Melbourne’s my inspiration, really.
You just turned twenty-eight, you’re getting close to thirty, does that put you in a different mindset now, knowing that you thirties are just around the corner?
Yeah, totally. I was saying the other day, shit, I better start working on that legacy, you know? Whether it’s making another generation, having kids, or doing something memorable. These kinds of things always fuck with your head. As soon as I work out my quarter-life crisis, it’s funny because you watch guys go through mid-life crises and they’re trying to buy a Porsche. And when you’re in a quarter-life crisis, all you want to do is buy a dirt bike, just this overwhelming need to want to go and buy a dirt bike. So that’s all I’m really thinking about at twenty-eight.
Learn more at DanielMerriweather.com • iTunes • MySpace • Facebook • Twitter
