Sky Ferreira’s biggest asset may very well be her bluntness. On and off her records, she says things that you can imagine inspiring some squirming inside the Capitol Records Tower. And after the rough go of it she’s had during her 5+ years as an "emerging" artist making and remaking her debut LP, the recently released Night Time, My Time came as something of a revelation.
One track in particular, "I Blame Myself", stands out as having anthem potential (and not just because I've seen its lyrics quoted a handful of times on Twitter since the album's release). Throughout the song, Ferreira spits self-doubt and frustrations with not being taken seriously—an understandable response for someone who's spent years grappling for artistic legitimacy. People hear the words "socialite," "Forever 21 model" and "drug arrest," and their minds go to a TMZ sort of place. She proves throughout her debut that those assumptions have nothing to do with the kind of songs Ferreira writes these days—but isn’t that the way judgments go for so many of us? That's what makes the track's angst so relatable. "I Blame Myself" achieves a difficult balancing act: It's so specific to Ferreira's own experiences in the public eye, but something about it also feels universal.
The chorus ("I just want you to realize I blame myself for my reputation") is fueled by self-deprecation (which is "a personal issue" for Ferreira), but many of the verses describe struggles that resonate with a lot of young woman in particular. "I’m just a face without a choice/ Trust you’d never like to guess what I think above the shoulders,” she snaps. It gets worse: "Ten years old without a voice/ I feel like nothing’s really changed, now I’m just a little older." All this, mind you, is atop one of the album’s most bubbly melodies and driving beats.
"It's not like, 'Oh feel sorry for me,'" she said of "I Blame Myself" in a recent interview, "because I don't feel sorry for myself at all." Ferreira’s perspective is brave—and even feminist. "I experience feminist culture calling me out and saying I’m not a feminist, but I think I definitely am a feminist, in my own way," Ferreira recently said. “I didn’t know there was a book about how to be a proper feminist, but I think of myself as one because I am doing what I want to do. No one’s telling me to do it."
Ferreira has always walked some sort of line, most notably between a major label home and a more underground sensibility. That sort of balance can seem like a high-wire act, but in reality Ferreira has achieved the best of both worlds: Space and time to do her own thing, with a little more of a mainstream audience to receive it. "I Blame Myself" is a celebration of that middle ground. It would be easy to mistake it as an admission of weakness, but it's really a declaration of force—a song about the power of vulnerability.