Hear Me Out: Sky Ferreira’s ‘Everything Is Embarrassing’ is the perfect pop record
If you were one to browse Tumblr in the early 2010s, within a niche of internet culture defined heavily by a curation of aesthetics and the perfect soundtrack, chances are you saw and heard Sky Ferreira during a life-altering scroll.
Ferreira’s foray into music came in the same way as many of her peers: uploading demos onto MySpace. At 13 years old, she sent Swedish songwriting and production duo Bloodshy & Avant a letter asking for a recording contract; her Myspace profile was a definitive factor in them saying ‘yes’. From the beginning of her career, there was something different about Ferreira: she wrote and sang with a pop sensibility, but she was by no means a traditional “pop star”.
Ferreira’s lyrics were melancholic and surreal, and in her instrumentals, she blended electro and art-pop with indie-rock and new wave. No matter how hard her label tried, she would never become, as she described to Notion in 2013, “the perfect little pop robot”.
With an EP, As If!, and a number of singles to her name, Ferreira’s debut album was one of the most anticipated in music at the time, but it would be delayed for about two years by her label, sparking the beginnings of a contentious working relationship that follows Ferreira to the present day. In 2012, in place of her album, she released Ghost, a five-song EP featuring the single ‘Everything Is Embarrassing’.
The song became a sensation, an instant soundtrack for a generation of teenagers and 20-somethings that found solace in Ferreira’s mournful song from the unforgettable opening line of “Everything and nothing always haunts me.”
‘Everything Is Embarrassing’ laments exactly what the title suggests: an inescapable sense of dread propelled by love and reflected in a multitude of ways. From the echoed chorus – ”Maybe if you let me be your lover / Maybe if you tried then I would not bother” – to lines like, “You’re trying to hold the heart that you once tore,” there is a morbid romanticism that seeps through, sung in Ferreira’s voice that harnesses a distinct pain.
The genesis of the song came from Devonté Hynes, the genius known as Blood Orange, who wrote the demo and sent it to Ferreira, who then altered its lyrics and structure with producer Ariel Rechtshaid, and the result is reminiscent of a 1980s ballad blended with booming piano chords and Hynes’ unmistakable guitars rounding out the groove. With no exaggeration, the trio crafted a synth-pop masterpiece, timeless while capturing every fleeting emotion of an era in which Ferreira’s voice and sound defined the next wave of pop music.
‘Everything Is Embarrassing’s music video became a time capsule of the internet age, resonant in its intriguing simplicity. Shot in black and white, clips of Ferreira singing atop a fire escape, a stairwell and in a children’s park are spliced together. She stands out with her white-blonde hair and all-black outfit, an icon in the making.
With no budget for an accompanying video, Ferreira relied on a curated atmosphere. “We bought bus passes and filmed the music video between LA and downtown,” Ferreira explained to Pop Dust in 2012. “And then we shot on the top of the Capitol Records building, which has a great view.”
Ferreira followed with her debut album, Night Time, My Time, in 2013, with ‘Everything Is Embarrassing’ as a bonus track. Even as fans eagerly await her long-anticipated follow-up, her fanbase has never waned, nor has the excitement at the thought of what she will conjure next.
Some 13-and-a-half years after its initial release, ‘Everything Is Embarrassing’ reverberates like a distant memory, fascinating in its ability to stay freshly captivating, as it did years ago, and through it all, Ferreira firmly remains one of pop’s most enthralling figures.
