Perhaps it can’t be overstated enough what a coup it is for Sky Ferreira to have been asked by none other than writer-director Halina Reijn to compose an original song for her latest film, Babygirl. Not just any song though: the song that would be featured as the credits rolled. In other words, the most important song of the soundtrack, distilling the entire movie into a track that’s under five minutes. Something Billie Eilish also got to be a part of when asked to compose an original number for Greta Gerwig’s 2023 blockbuster, Barbie (honestly, way more of a big deal than Eilish singing a Bond theme via “No Time to Die”). Indeed, not only does a key portion of “What Was I Made For?” play during one of the most emotional third-act moments of the film, it also plays during, what else, the credits (granted, after Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s “Barbie World”).
While Ferreira and Eilish might seem, in many ways, musically worlds apart (in addition to being an entire generation apart), “Leash” and “What Was I Made For?” both address certain existential motifs. Throughout “Leash,” that sense of existentialism is boiled down, in a nihilistic fashion typical of Ferreira, to: “Surrender to the master/In the end, nothing matters.” Eilish opts to get a bit more nuanced by questioning (to the nondescript heavens perhaps, or maybe just to Ruth Handler, Barbie’s creator), “I used to know but I’m not sure now/What I was made for/What was I made for?”
For a while, it might have seemed as though Ferreira was asking herself the same question. After all, she was creatively atrophying for an entire decade while under the thumb of her stifling and stymying contract with Capitol Records. That she hasn’t released a new album since her debut, 2013’s Night Time, My Time, was also due to creative clashes with the label, of whom Ferreira recently stated, “[Capitol Records] kept me from putting out new music for ten years as a way of making me look like I’m incapable of it.” And has repeatedly said things in a similar vein over the years, including her mention of Capitol’s botched attempt at trying to push her in a more pop direction for As If!, the EP that preceded the release of Night Time, My Time. And yes, even though As If! retrospectively sounds like Ferreira doing a parody of a pop star (particularly the title track, “Sex Rules!”), it’s still an important part of her already limited discography. Which is why it’s so important to include something like As If! on streaming platforms. Alas, Capitol has blatantly prevented this, along with doing other fucked-up shit like locking Ferreira out of her own SoundCloud account.
As the years continued to tick by, hope for new music from Ferreira continued to dwindle, even among her most die-hard fans. This being, again, why it can’t be emphasized enough how truly momentous it is that she’s released a new song in the wake of Capitol finally “freeing” her a.k.a. abruptly dropping her as one of their artists via an automated and forwarded email. And that the opportunity was given to her by, of course, another woman. One who seems to have noted that, if anyone (apart from Madonna) could write a song about dominance and submission—a sadomasochistic dynamic, if you will—it was Ferreira after her years of torment. And yes, her second album has long been announced as having the title: Masochism.
While Eilish might have started making music around the same age as Ferreira (the latter was thirteen when she started taking opera lessons to improve her voice, the former was thirteen when “Ocean Eyes” was released on none other than SoundCloud), she’s had a more “pleasant” experience with the music business for many reasons. For a start, because she’s proven herself to be the “thing” that the industry loves in a female musician most: “unproblematic.” At least when it comes to being “easy to work with” (though maybe that’s because she only works with her brother, Finneas). And, as Ferreira herself has put it with regard to being painted as a “troubled woman,” “Troubled women. You can do whatever you want if they’re not like, save-me troubled.” Britney Spears sure knows that, and she actually was “save-me troubled.”
As for Eilish starting out at a similarly young age, she was never save-me troubled, enveloped in a loving, supportive family, with a brother who already knew the ins and outs of the music industry, and could guide Eilish through it. Ferreira, in contrast, had no such guidance—apart from, if one really wants to go there, Michael Jackson (her grandma, Karen McConnell, was his long-time hairstylist). But that’s not exactly a source of “healthy” guidance at all, now is it?
In any case, in an article for The Guardian that Ferreira was interviewed for in 2022, Laura Snapes wrote, “From day one, she was a mouthy fifteen-year-old telling older suits they were wrong.” Ferreira added, “A lot of people see that as like: ‘This is why you’re in the situation you’re in now.’” Because you can’t “upset”/“invoke the wrath of” he who controls the purse strings. As though she “asked for it” by being “difficult” a.k.a. simply wanting to make music on her own terms.
With the release of “Leash,” Ferreira is starting to do that again, slowly but, hopefully, surely. And many of the lyrics, for as applicable as they are to Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman), seem to have been pulled directly from Ferreira’s own experience with Capitol over the last decade via lines like, “As I live and breathe/I’m dead to you,” “Blood was on the wall/We always knew I’d let you down,” “I see you, I know the truth,” “I fought so hard, just to be erased” and, perhaps most significantly, “I know I’ll never get my way/I tore apart this veil of shame.” For the moment, however, Ferreira isgetting her way—and enjoying a unique form of soundtrack glory in a way that Eilish had with Barbie back in 2023. Even if Babygirl is slightly more, let’s say, “fringe” and “underground.” Just like Ferreira herself.
As for the concluding verse on “What Was I Made For?,” it’s perfectly relevant to Ferreira’s current, fresh-out-of-the-shackles state: “Think I forgot how to be happy/Something I’m not, but something I can be/Something I wait for/Something I’m made for.” As are her long-awaiting fans (Charli XCX included), who can only achieve that happiness with some more new music from Ferreira. In the meantime, who knows? Maybe Ferreira will get her well overdue Establishment recognition (even more overdue than Charli XCX’s) by being nominated for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards this year. Just as Eilish was for “What Was I Made For?” in 2024. Of course, even if she did manage to get nominated, there’s probably no way they would award such a “problematic” woman as Ferreira.
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