Sky Ferreira shot by Sammy King
(Picture: ES Magazine )It is 10pm on the South Bank and Sky Ferreira is gazing up at Big Ben, glowing in the late evening. She lifts the hem of her floor-length, shimmering navy dress and fearlessly clambers up on to a high wall, posing for a photograph with the dark River Thames below, the same colour as her dress. A friend offers the pop star a hand getting up but she doesn’t need it. Ferreira, 30, looks poised, a woman finally in control of her own image.
‘I’ve never had the opportunity to enjoy my job because of the way the system works and the pressure on you,’ she tells me when we meet the following week in a café in east London. ‘Music has always been an ordeal. But I want to make my 30s better than my 20s.’ The last time the singer from Los Angeles was in London for work it was 2014 and she played at Field Day festival, where fans sung along to ‘Everything is Embarrassing’ — her first big hit, written with the singer Dev Hynes. Back then, Ferreira was on the rise. She signed to a record label when she was 15 and her emotionally frank pop was the antidote to years of glossy girl bands. She played with Miley Cyrus, collaborated with Primal Scream and branched into acting, with roles in Twin Peaks and the film Baby Driver.
