After a few false starts, Sky Ferreira has finally become the cool, girl power popstar that the post-Hole generation has been waiting for. The 21 year old has already done enough to put most popstars to shame - toured with Miley Cyrus, been arrested with her boyfriend (Zachary Cole Smith from the band Diiv) and bailed herself out on her credit card, modelled for Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein (amongst others), been signed to and dropped from a major label, changed her style from dance pop to synthie indie rock, changed her hair colour and, obviously, performed for Michael Jackson (her grandmother was his hairdresser.) As Night Time Is My Timeis released in the UK this week, The Debrief found her backstage at a recent show, tired, but simultaneously a bag of sweet youthful energy…
The Debrief: You’ve just toured with Miley Cyrus and then some more dates on your own – is it weird going from playing in stadium to, like, a bar?
Sky Ferreira: It always feels good playing live and it’s always so different – one day I’m playing Staples center in LA and the next I’m playing a 200-capacity venue in east London. I had played big shows with Vampire Weekend, at the Barclay center, but it doesn’t compare. [Miley's] audience just screams.
DB: Is it scary?
SF: You get this huge rush when you’re onstage, but you don’t see anyone. I have the worst stage fright and, actually, playing a show like that is the best, because I can feel the audience’s energy, but I don’t have to see anyone.
DB: It must feel great to be able to play your own album.
SF: It feels so good to finally have my own stuff out. And now it’s done and out of the way, I can move onto the next thing, I don’t mean that in a bad way. But all I ever heard for, like, five years was, ‘Where’s the album?!’ Also, touring an album... you don’t want to get tired of singing the same songs every night. And if you don’t like what you’re doing, it’s even worse. Not that I don’t like what I’m singing.
DB: What’s the first thing you do when you get down time.
SF: Sleep. I’m bad at ignoring my phone when I get home, too. Not that everyone’s dying to talk to me, but I just don’t look at my phone for three days. I have a projector at home, so my boyfriend and I watch The Sopranos. We’re the stereotype! It’s weird, because Cole will tweet a question and people will reply, like, ‘What’s your HBO go password,’ and they all give it to him, but when I do it people do the complete opposite. Although I say that about HBO Go, we bought the box set of Sopranos. When it’s a good show, you just go through it.
DB: What other shows do you watch?
SF: I need to find a way to go to Australia. I’m supposed to meet Chris Lilley [who’s behind Summer Heights High and Ja’mie: Private School Girl] there, who’s my hero. I’ve been setting it up on Twitter. I got really ballsy one night at like, 2am, that’s when the peak of my creativity is because I don’t sleep, so then I started coming up with ideas for all the characters, and I started messaging him about all these things that Ja’mie could do, like go to NYFW.
DB: So, it’s not all bad on Twitter.
SF: I have a lot of fun on Twitter, but I don’t think people have fun with me. Like today, I put that I was just married, so now everyone thinks I am married, but I was just joking, because I was in Vegas.
DB: Are you?
SF: Maybe. I don’t know.
DB: I liked your recent rant about trolling.
SF: It was kind of ironic. It’s cool that it turned into a message, though. My entire life I’ve tried to get people to listen and no one has ever listened. Until the one time I wasn’t thinking about it, everyone suddenly listens to me and understood what I was talking about, and I didn’t have to sing about it. It was weird because it turned into ‘A Message’, when it was really just a thought. It was good, now I can take advantage of people listening and talk about things other than myself.
DB: I think about your tweet, ‘Women shouldn’t be a think piece,’ quite a lot.
SF: Yeah, it’s true. I feel live everything is a think piece. I refused to even acknowledge Normcore until yesterday – there were 10 pieces on it. There’s a think piece on every fucking thing. With that tweet, though, I was really thinking about Miley Cyrus. When I wrote that tweet, there was a think piece about everything: why she’s cut her hair, if she’s taking advantage of midgets... I don’t think she’s putting that much thought into things, I think she’s just... cutting her hair!!!
DB: People love to have an opinion, don’t they.
SF: But there’s a difference between having an opinion and just being a straight up asshole or saying something hurtful for the sake of it. I’m not by any means a ray of sunshine, but I’m also not trying to make everything negative. It just drags you down.
DB: Do you get tired of being referred to as a popstar.
SF: I actually don’t care. I think it’s kind of funny, because I don’t feel like a popstar. But I also don’t feel like an indie musician. I’d rather be called those things than everything else I’ve been called.
DB: Are you still doing a lot of modelling?
SF: I guess if the opportunity comes for the right thing, then yes. I also have to be a lot more careful now because it’s not just me posing for a picture, because my name is associated to whatever brand. But it’s not my main focus now. It was starting to get to the point where people were like, ‘Is she a singer or is she a model.’
DB: Did people question it?!
**SF: **Yeah. And I guess it leads back to trolling too - people see these pictures of you and they don’t see you as a person with feelings. Like, it’s a part of your job to deal with it. I don’t agree with that. It’s happened to me and to other people who aren’t famous. It reminds me of being in school.
DB: Did you hate school?
SF: I was painfully shy and was picked on. So modelling reminds me of being in a gigantic version of elementary school. The sexual stuff really weirds me out.
DB: Why?
SF: I want to feel safe at my shows, I don’t want to feel like I’m going to get molested. I have some crazy fans. I like it, until they like me so much that they hate me. That’s when it gets weird.
DB: Do you feel more settled with yourself now?
SF: I feel a lot more at ease with who I am. And not that I cared about the perception of me, I feel like it has changed since the album came out. Pretty much until this point, if I did something right it was because of someone else, and if I did something wrong it was my own fault. That’s frustrating. Especially if it doesn’t work out. I mean, for me it didn’t work out multiple times.
DB: But you’ve got there in the end.
SF: Yes. It’s hard in an era where everyone’s a YouTube sensation. I think internet people expect things to happen overnight. But look at Bowie. When he started out he was a hippy and then he turned into Ziggy Stardust. People tell me I’ve changed and I’m like, ‘that’s what you do.’
**DB: Speaking of internet sensations. Have you seen Justin Bieber’s deposition video. **
SF: I won’t look at it. Not because I got arrested. I just think it’s compromising his privacy like, beyond. There was a rumour last week that he showed his dick or they had the rights to do that. I feel like they’re exploiting him. Ok, fair enough, he’s an example for kids, but he’s a 21 year old boy with a carnival ship load of money and was having fun and smoked some weed. Like most 21 year olds might do. It would be one thing if the police tweeted about every person they arrested. But, I guess you kind of live and learn from those experiences.
Follow Hanna on Twitter @hannahanra
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.