Sky Ferreira: The Lost Album and a Decade of Label Gridlock

Sky Ferreira released one of the most acclaimed debuts of 2013, toured with Miley Cyrus, and then effectively vanished from music for a decade, becoming one of modern pop's most frustrating mysteries. Raised partly by her grandmother, Michael Jackson's longtime hairstylist, and classically trained as a contralto, she was building a skyscraper while the label kept changing the locks.This episode traces the multi-year tug-of-war over her debut, the drug arrests and vocal hemorrhage the media sensationalized, her pivot to acting and modeling, and the fan rebellion that funded a Times Square billboard and a plane over Capitol Records demanding her release. At its heart is a collision between her perfectionism and an industry that values speed.Her unusual upbringing adjacent to global fame and early traumaThe label's shifting EPs and album titles as it tried to market herThe grit behind the messy rock star headlines, from a hemorrhage to 60 stitchesThe Free Sky Ferreira movement, the billboard, and the airplane bannerBeing dropped, going independent, and the long-delayed promise of Masochism