Since the release of her only album nine years ago, Ferreira has become pop’s greatest enigma. As she attempts her second, she talks about being set up to fail – and how she missed out on playing Madonna
It is 9pm in Barcelona and Sky Ferreira is due onstage at Primavera. As the minutes tick by and nobody appears, the festival crowd grit their teeth. A week earlier, in Portugal, Ferreira was 20 minutes late and plagued by sound issues. This time she appears at 9.10pm. As the sparkling churn of her 2013 song Boys kicks in, Ferreira starts singing. She’s inaudible. The music stops. “Story of my life,” she shrugs, her tiny face shrouded by futuristic black aviators and her hurricane of platinum hair. “We have to start over,” she tells her band, who look tense. The track is off; everyone is out of time. They move on.
If Ferreira, 29, has a trademark beyond belting pop music that sounds like Madonna collaborating with Suicide, it is, gallingly, the false start. She signed to a major label as a wilful California-born 15-year-old and fiercely resisted being fashioned into Britney 2.0. (Apparently they missed her listing Bow Wow Wow and Nico as influences on Myspace.) It took four years, a label change and much stealth for Ferreira to release her fantastic debut album, Night Time, My Time, in 2013, which addressed her chaotic reputation as well as childhood sexual assault.
