Interviewed by: John Early | Photographer: Morgan Maher | Makeup: Akina Shimizu | Hair: Lauren Palmer-Smith | Styling: Lana Jay Lackey | Styling Assistant: Sophia Ozan | Videographer: Camille Mariet

Sky Ferreira is the cover star for our December issue! Buy the 2025 print anthology zine here

Sky Ferreira Polyester zine cover December 2025 anthology polyesterzine john early — Make it stand out

When your name is Sky Ferreira, there’s a great deal of lore that surrounds you. You were a wunderkind who made one of the most influential albums of the 2010s, inspiring scores of Tumblr teens to impose the words “everything is embarrassing” over greyscale digital camera images taken in the local park. You worked with David Lynch on a reboot of his most beloved project.
Your unique musical style and private nature mean that you have become a rare enigma among a generation of celebrities who are constantly oversharing, a true successor to geniuses like Enya and Kate Bush. Oh, and your grandmother was Michael Jackson’s personal hairdresser.
Over the years, Sky has become so many different things to so many different people, to the extent that even those who have interviewed her in the press have brought these projections to bear. Here, then, she simply speaks for herself.
In conversation with her friend, the actor and comedian John Early (interviewed by Sky last year and returning the favour for Polyester now), she talks about her writing process, the album she’s working on, her love of Aaliyah, being a TV Person, and a bunch of other stuff you’d probably really love to learn.

John Early: Okay, Sky, I want to start with an apology, which is, I’m sorry that I didn’t invite you to the Brandy and Monica concert.

Sky Ferreira: It’s okay.

I went with my sister. She was visiting from Nashville, and it was the end of our trip. She was in high school in the late 90s when they came out.

Did they get in a fight? Remember when Monica punched Brandy?

Oh, yes. First of all, it was a genius concert. It was genius. I could not believe it. Obviously, I was expecting a certain amount of ironic pleasure, but it was complete, direct in the vein. It was brilliantly structured and there was nothing condescending or kind of throwbacky about it. It was just good. It was purely good. Anyway, so much of the concert though, is them correcting the narrative of making sure people know that the feud was kind of put on by the record label.

They were like Bette and Joan.

So there were all these collages of their speaking voices, woven throughout the show.

Were there visuals?

Yeah. It was like: “The record label wanted us to be fighting because they thought it would sell but tonight…” And then they came out holding hands and they ended the show holding hands. So, I just want to let you know that I’m sorry because I think you and I would have really enjoyed it together.

Next time.

Were you thinking about Brandy when you were singing aged 14?

Kind of, I guess. It was kind of anyone that started when they were babies, which is just fucked up now that I think about it and I’m an adult. I guess in some ways it stunted my life or whatever, but I wasn’t like a Disney person and I never wanted to be. And she’s someone that’s kind of like that. TLC or Aaliyah, that’s a big one for me. Aaliyah is top three for me, as a kid, you know I remember the day she died, vividly. The morning it happened, I cried so hard. The last time we hung out, I sent you photos of Aaliyah when she was 15. Did you see these photos?

“I was desperate to be on Star Search. I mean, Star Search was kind of already done. But, I wanted to do it because everyone I liked was on Star Search.”

They’re so beautiful.

She just looks so effortless. She’s Madonna level, you know? She’s sophisticated. Yes, but there’s nothing forced about it.

But also she’s so talented and she’s probably the only - besides Cher - really the only pop star that could have been a major actress. She has movie star quality.

I completely agree. And she’s so good in both Romeo Must Die and Queen of The Damned. I agree she had such an otherworldly kind of wisdom and poise and grace at such a young age. You didn’t feel like you were participating in some weird, Disney, kind of child exploitation thing. It felt like she was in control of her image.

And not just with R Kelly, she went through a lot and it’s crazy that she’s not defined by that. And she’s literally so deeply embedded in culture people don’t realise it. She had taste. It wasn’t orchestrated. And everything that she did was so collaborative. That’s why every person that worked with her, they still cry about it.

I think I can say with complete confidence that my favourite period of music was when she was reborn into the Timbaland Missy world. “One in a Million.” There’s no cooler sound than “One in a Million”

There was something cosmic about all of them. They were so young and so exciting. I’m not obsessed with youth in that way. But it wasn’t about the fact that they were young. They just had that kind of energy that I feel like that I would like to get back to in my life at some point. Just undo everything. [Laughs] Amnesia. Dementia. There’s no limits really. They’re not scared to take those risks. I have that now, I used to be fearless in that way.

It’s weird, young people I work with are more worried about public perception than I ever was at their age.

Like self-consciousness.

Yeah, like a self-awareness. And not in a good way. It’s worrying about the outcome. This is when you don’t have to be! In your actual life, sort of.

But how could they not be worried when from moment one you’re on social media? You’re completely in a prison of self-awareness, from the get go. And we were so lucky to not be - I mean, at least it wasn’t as entrenched. I mean, when I was 14 there weren’t any. But when you were 14, there was Myspace.

But I was too young to be on there. I was too young to be doing a lot of things.

But you were thinking consciously about Aaliyah when you were that age.

I’ve always thought about Aaliyah. Everything was effortless. Styling, everything. I remember watching a VH1 Behind the Music special and they played a clip of Aaliyah performing on Star Search. I used to call Star Search when I was in the third grade.

Oh my God.

It’s so funny. I was desperate to be on Star Search. I mean, Star Search was kind of already done. But, I wanted to do it because everyone I liked was on Star Search.

You’re a child of LA.

I mean, did they even film it in LA? I think it’s in Florida. I think the way people talk about LA now, I feel like when I was a kid, it was like Orlando, Florida! If you wanted to go do anything, literally that’s where you’d go to - which is so funny. Well that’s the other thing about being young. I was like a TV child. An MTV, VH1 child - and like a latchkey kid.

Okay, wait, let’s talk about TCM here and your love of old movies. How did this happen?

My dad. It used to be almost like a punishment. I mean, I liked them but he forced me to watch old archaic movies. I don’t wanna watch fucking Charlie Chaplin, I’m eight. Like please, anything but this.

Then at what point did you realise that you liked it?

I always kind of liked it. I liked it when there were girls starring in it.

Well, same. Me too.

There had to be a little something. Like glamour. Or a face.

“LA is haunted, which I love. Good people watching. And I feel like the way people talk about LA isn’t LA at all.”

To me, the point of movies is women. I mean, I love men, I want to be very clear, but I watch movies for women.

People are always talking about: “Finally female driven movies!” I think there might have been more in the 30s and 40s to be honest. Not to be a time lord or anything. I think it’s also a form of escapism for me. I am such an LA Person - I’m not like an LA Person, I have no friends here, but the actual city I love.

Once I lived in LA for long enough and I started to watch older movies, you do feel a kind of secret connection.

There’s something magical and fucked up and haunted. LA is haunted, which I love. Good people watching. And I feel like the way people talk about LA isn’t LA at all.

Can we talk about Michael [Jackson]?

Yes we can talk about Michael.

Okay, so this is such a crazy part of your biography, which is that your grandmother, who you spent a significant amount of your childhood with, was Michael’s hairdresser for 30 years, correct?

Yes.

What did that mean? Tell me about it - was she doing his hair and you’re at her feet?

Kind of. Because I kind of had to trail along - everywhere and anywhere - and I was very quiet in general.

And this is like the early 90s?

Yeah, I guess it was the early 90’s, as far back as I can remember. But, I never saw him in public except once my entire life really. And I like to be completely honest, I obviously knew it was him, but I didn’t really associate it with him being the same person, because he had changed by the time I knew him. I’d think of the “Thriller” music video as Michael Jackson versus the man in front of me getting their hair done.

So, how long did she work with him?

Since the 80s, I think until he died. But, the thing is… People ask if he paid attention to you as a kid - it wasn’t like that, obviously. Really it was something I needed because no one in my family knows anything about music, or does anything related to that kind of stuff.

So where did your love of music or desire to make music come from?

I just always kind of had it. It wasn’t something that was forced or exposed to me really. I remember I knew what I wanted to look like and stuff. It’s weird. And then it ended up happening. Fucking weird. But it wasn’t because of that moment, I just kind of visualised it, but I was five.

It doesn’t make sense really. But I saw it and I understood it, it was just something that naturally came to me. And it’s funny, it’s one of those things - I had a lot of trouble doing everything else, basically, that most people can do. And this isn’t one of those self mythologising stories, there’s actual video. When I was a kid, when someone would play a song I would be able to hum all of it note by note before I could speak. I knew how to sing before I could really kind of do anything else. Basically, I only knew how to sing and read until I was 18. But everything else didn’t happen.

That’s all you need.

I think that was more of a defence thing because I just was so quiet. But I liked singing and I liked to perform. I didn’t have stage fright honestly until after I put things out. It’s different than now. Let’s just say that. You actually had to do it for real. Like eat it over and over again. I’m still eating it, which is crazy.

You mean eat shit?

Yeah, like over and over again. But I kind of like it, there’s something sick about it. I almost feel like I like this because it makes me feel like I’m going towards something. Instead of just being like, what am I doing? Because I hate that feeling.

I wanted to talk to you about this. I feel that sometimes at this stage in my career - you can hardly call it that - that the best thing I could ever do, that would be the most fulfilling and fruitful thing, would be if I just performed more regularly in a very low key environment. If you did a regular, low key live show, it would be such a big deal.

Well, that was kind of the thing, like my first real show - I didn’t know how to put together a band, I’ve never had a team of people orchestrating my shit. I’m very careful about what I’m actually making or what I’m doing to some extent. For me personally, not because I’m careful about what people want because people aren’t going to want that by the time you put it out, so who fucking cares. I don’t have the energy for that. I also just don’t have the social skills or anything to accomplish that. So the first real show I ever played was sold out - but my band sucked, I sucked.

How old were you?

19. The first show I technically ever played, where like someone actually took me seriously. I never had a community of musicians to help me figure things out. I just didn’t come from that, I still don’t. To a fault. Because it’s so about that too to some extent, if you’re not into having like session players or something. It set the tone for people to go in on me. For the rest of my life. Not really, but that’s what it feels like. Not to sound like a victim or martyr. The criticism was heightened. I didn’t have a chance to fuck up and learn without someone saying something about it.

This is the problem with modern life. It’s all seen. It’s literally impossible to develop in private.

Exactly. Or to not just become completely like a shell of yourself. You’re not doing it.

It takes a really long time to be able to put on a good show. You can put on a raw, kind of crazy show. I feel like the shows I used to do when I was younger were way too long, they were extremely messy, but there was maybe some sort of charm. But now I actually feel like I can put on a show and I have some control over it, but it’s taken me so long.

Would you ever just post up in a little place and play songs?

I mean, yeah, I’d do it. I’ve done it before.

What’s your relationship to live performing now?

I actually like performing. I just don’t like having the gun to my head. The thing is I’ve never undersold. Most of my shows sell out or do well. That’s what’s weird and false about the online narrative related to my shows. I think these people want me to do a certain thing and I’m not going to do it. But even if I did it, they would be like, ‘The fuck is this?’ Like dancing and shit on stage, do you know what I mean? Whatever, it’s super misogynistic. But also like, oh my God, “Singing’s not a real thing.” Sorry? I actually like playing live, I play well. I actually play well. I’ve never walked off stage. When I hear stuff, it’s like, “She started 30 minutes late.” Well, I played for two hours, and I only have one album that’s technically released. So what’s the issue?

This is another problem with modern life. Why do I have access to this information, these people’s complaints? Why do people have a direct pipeline to me at all times?

I put it in my contracts, I’m not starting before 9:30pm. I put it in a contract at this point because I’m just not going to do it. But it’s also like, I don’t have 10,000 people getting me ready. Yeah, I have a sound check and I have to get ready so I don’t sound like shit and also, if I look like shit, it’s a whole other problem. You have to play at 6pm, so bizarre. Like, who wants to see music at like 6pm?

Do you wear sunglasses when you sing all the time?

Yeah, it helps with my stage fright, but I’ve gotten better about it. I’ve started taking them off, like for a whole set. I recently sang a song with Smerz. Their label reached out to me about a remix but I couldn’t do it, because I was working on another project. They reached out to me personally, the day before the show. I think I was like, “sure, I’ll sing with you”. I haven’t played with someone else in a long time and didn’t know them at all. I get nervous so I wrote down the lyrics and I’m holding them - it looks like I’m reading my homework, but I sound good. It was fun, the energy was good and people were kind of crazy hearing it. I like singing, I like the energy, I like the adrenaline and stuff like that. It was kind of just right. I liked singing with someone else, we were looking at each other. I wasn’t wearing sunglasses and I had no control over the sound or lighting. It was like a test to myself.

You survived.

I did!

I’m always scared about asking about this but I want to ask you some kind of basic questions about music.

You ask me anything, okay? I literally don’t care.

Thank you. Here’s my question. When you’re writing a song, does the idea lyrically, thematically come before the music or does the melody come?

It could go either direction sometimes. I don’t really have a format to write. I feel like I have more of one for how I put a song together outside of lyrics and melody. I’m more of a collage person. It’s like fragments of it. Sometimes I’ll randomly think of something that will trigger it - it’s a lot of voice notes or whatever. Then I’ll think of lyrics or something will stick. Sometimes it’ll just magically come together, once in a while, both together which I love. It takes me a while or it’ll happen immediately. But sometimes the lyrics are so funny - I have thousands of lyrics but I walk in like, “I got this, I have a whole song” and then I’m like, “I have nothing.” It’s almost like “I see colours” - no I don’t [Laughs]. It’s more like a projector in my mind, I can see it and I can kind of visualise it. I think I have a music video brain. That’s how I learned, honestly, that’s how I learned about music - by watching MTV.

Me too.

That’s literally how I learned about music. That’s how I kind of express myself. And so I kind of see it in music video form. Or like in short film music video form. I don’t want to say musicals. But I love all the Bob Fosse stuff.

Sorry, this interview is absolutely freewheeling all over the place. Who cares? So Bloodshy & Avant, I read something on Wikipedia - it may or may not be true - that you reached out to them.

I reached out to them, I was thirteen.

That’s so sweet.

And then it happened. I literally did a Talking Heads cover. It doesn’t sound weird for a 13 year old to be like ‘I know Talking Heads’ now. It was weird back then due to what we were exposed to, but it wasn’t because I was alt or something. It was just like: I like the song. MTV, VH1, and I was up way too late as a kid. That’s how I learned about things.

Honestly, I was up way too late and I woke up way too early. I was watching VH1 Soul.

I’d like to put this on the record. I learned everything from TV.

Me too. Me too. TV was my best friend. Truly.

I mean, that’s honestly how you are exposed to things. I don’t think people realise that. People say it rots your brain or whatever and it’s like maybe! But it also, for me, changed my life.

Completely.

We’re TV people.

What are you working on now?

An album. People are like, “We heard that before.” I’m feeling good about it. I’ve really gone through a lot with this album obviously. There’s a lot of other shit behind that. Every time I think I reevaluate the situation, something else kind of happens. It’s finding the right people to do it. For me, a lot of it is done, written. I think there’s just a few more things that need to be done.

For the most part, I found a lot of people do not have the patience and don’t want to take the time to figure something out or push themselves the way I like to, or understand me and understand how I work. And the thing is, a lot of people just don’t work the same way I do - it’s also a boundaries thing. There’s a lot of people who kind of pretend that they’re all about searching for something. I still believe in song structure. I guess that’s considered a hot take now or something because people are like, “It should be under 2 minutes and thirty seconds” or “It shouldn’t be verse, chorus, verse, chorus or whatever.”

I had an experience where my friend Kate Berlant and I were kind of experimenting with making a Christmas album. We went about it in a very professional way, which was a mistake. We should have just tried home grown first, and let the kind of themes and melodies arise between us and maybe a musician in a room that was not a studio. But we literally went to a studio with a real fancy producer who is genius and great. But what I learned was like the way so much contemporary music is made now, which is like people just have these libraries of like, stuff they’ve kind of fucked around with. I felt like there was no attention to verse, chorus, pre-chorus, bridge, like the fundamentals.

Someone told me I had too many hooks recently.

No! We need hooks. We’re a culture in search of a hook. We’re so desperate for hooks.

I do understand the structure of songwriting and I do appreciate it but I also like making weird stuff too. But I also confidently know I can do both, and I feel like a lot of people try to do both, and pretend that it’s one or the other. I don’t want to sound like it’s completely underwater, but I also don’t want it to sound like shit, like dead. You know, there’s no balance.

But I just actually care, ‘cause I like listening to songs. But I also like listening to, I don’t know, complete garbage. You know what I mean? I think there’s a way to bring all those elements into it. I have dog hearing when it comes to details and like weird little things that other people don’t hear. And that’s the problem when I work with people. I’m like, “You don’t hear that?” But I like a good vocal. I try to do it like David Fincher, the Stanley Kubrick approach to music.

Yes, 700 takes.

I am there every second, and I think that is the one thing that bothers me, to be honest. Like these producers aren’t doing it for me. I’m doing it. Like they might help if they want to. They could be there. But like, I hear things that other people won’t hear.

To me this is a huge problem in filmmaking. Technology has gotten so good that you have to almost impose flaws on it. You have to impose film grain. You have to contrive limitations to make it have some sort of life. With music, I would imagine it’s maybe even worse. Contemporary music, to me, the main problem with it is that the desired sound is that they don’t sound like they’re in a room.

No, it’s dead.

People erase the room. They think it’s a virtue.

They erase breath. The breath is like a tone. But also, people think singing is easy. You know, they’re like you’re not a real musician if you’re just a fucking singer. Like it’s crazy.

And you have the technique. What was your training?

I was in a gospel choir.

“I thought I was going to be, like, an opera singer for three years. I was 14. And then suddenly I discovered Blogspot, downloading mixtapes. It broke my brain.”

Did Michael get you into that?

When I was around seven years old, he put me in a gospel choir. I was in two different gospel choirs until i was 15 years old.I was working on this single for the last month, and I noticed the choir mentality is there. But it’s not like choir vocals. It’s like how I kind of organise, how I sing and details and timing. It’s funny because no one would ever notice that. I like it to sound full. So that’s what I did first, and then he signed me up for opera classes, like lessons when I was 11. So I thought I was going to be like an opera singer for three years. I was 14. And then suddenly I discovered Blogspot, downloading mixtapes. It broke my brain. Youtube was new. I don’t think people understand what it was like on YouTube. It exposed me to all these other things that you kind of just knew it was around you. Or if you were in a scene. But like, I had no friends, so I didn’t discover it by social environment or what I was culturally surrounded by.

How long did you stay in the opera classes?

Til I was 17. And I had to unlearn it, kind of. But the thing is, I would always get in trouble. Like I had to kind of untrain myself. The discipline kind of stayed with me, certain vowels and stuff like that. Like, I couldn’t sing r’s for a while in a modern or pop way.

In acting school I learned a kind of classic American dialect and all my southerness left me and I’m, like, still slowly getting the southern back. It’s really fascinating. Tell us about your first show at Splash, which was my first gay bar.

I forgot how it even happened. I didn’t know what it was. Someone asked me to play a show in New York City when I was living there. So it was technically my first US show.

Wow. How many songs did you do?

Three because that’s all I had.

Oh my God. And did people there know who you were or was it just gay guys getting drunk?

Some of them did, which is crazy but also it was so funny because there were these firemen background dancers giving each other rim jobs. And I didn’t know that was like a thing. But I remember there were literally guys dancing in like cages.

Did it feel like a successful show or did you feel like you bombed?

I loved it, I was like, “This is my favourite thing ever. This is the best thing I’ve ever done.” Because they were losing it.

It doesn’t take a lot for a gay guy to lose it.

They were like, “A 12 year old on stage? In a velour mini dress and high heels?”

Well, I think that’s a perfect note to end on. When Sky interviewed me, she brought me a TLC poster, and I brought you two pieces of cake that I made. It’s the Nigella Lawson Guinness chocolate cake. So it’s a chocolate cake made with Guinness.

Alright Sky, we love you.

Sky Ferreira is the cover star for our December issue! Buy the 2025 print anthology zine here.

Sky Ferreira on Songwriting, LA, and Her New Album

“I was desperate to be on Star Search. I mean, Star Search was kind of already done. But, I wanted to do it because everyone I liked was on Star Search.”

“LA is haunted, which I love. Good people watching. And I feel like the way people talk about LA isn’t LA at all.”

“I thought I was going to be, like, an opera singer for three years. I was 14. And then suddenly I discovered Blogspot, downloading mixtapes. It broke my brain.”

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