Sky Ferreira's new song "Everything Is Embarrassing" has been the toast of Pitchfork and indie-centric music blogs in recent weeks, and rightfully so! It's a sweet, melancholy pop tune, and it sounds good alongside hits by Lykke Li, Grimes and Robyn. The song is a left turn for Ferreira, though – her previous singles have been rather bold and assertive, and this one is delicate and introverted.
It's a victory for her label, Capitol, who have been trying to figure out how to sell the 20-year-old singer for two years. This is the second time Ferreira has been repackaged this year, actually. A few months ago, she released "Red Lips," a heavy alt-rock tune co-written by Garbage's Shirley Manson. The video was made by noted sleaze-auteur Terry Richardson.
Ferreira released an EP called As If! last year, which was promoted with an official lyrics video for the song "Sex Rules." (It's about how sex totally RULES.) That video has since been made private and both the "Sex Rules" single and the EP are no longer available in the iTunes store, so it looks like the label would like to pretend it never happened.
The "Sex Rules" video may be gone, but this promo clip for "Traces," an electro-ballad from the As If! EP, is still on YouTube, though not on her VeVo page.
Before As If!, Ferreira was being positioned as more of a pop bad girl type, but with a touch of strange meta-humor. This clip for her 2010 single "Obsession," in which she plays a teenager deeply obsessed with character actor Michael Madsen, may be one of the most WTF music videos ever made. The video is still on Ferreira's official channel, but the song is no longer on sale.
Before "Obsession," Ferreira gave icy techno-pop a shot with "One." Her label made a really cool and expensive-looking video for this song, but that's also been pulled from YouTube. That's too bad, since it's probably her best song so far. The staccato vocal hook is kinda genius in the way it makes romantic obsession sound like a CD skipping forever in your head.
Ferreira has been emphasizing a Lolita vibe every step of the way, but it's especially noticeable in the video for her first single "17," which came out when she was around that age. This one also has been scrubbed from iTunes, and while the video is on YouTube, it has been pulled from her official channel.