Sky Ferreira On Leaked Demos: “I’m Fully Capable Of Writing My Own Songs”

Sky Ferreira has taken to Twitter to defended her songwriting capabilities, after an early demo of her track Everything Is Embarrassing, written and recorded by Dev Hynes, aka Blood Orange, surfaced online.

“I have & [I am] fully capable of writing my own songs. I never claimed to have written Everything Is Embarrassing by myself,” wrote Ferreira on Twitter today, in response to Stereogum’s publication of the leaked demo. “I love @devhynes work & always have.”

Stereogum notes that while Hynes has not had any public beef with Ferreira over songwriting credits on the song, the two seemed to be at odds in their respective FADER profiles from last year, with Ferreira admitting it “bothered” her that Hynes sings Everything Is Embarrassing live, introducing it as a song he wrote for her, and Hynes responding that he was “annoyed” by those comments.

Ferreira disputed claims of a feud via Twitter and said her comments were taken “out of context”. “My frustration never came from lack of ‘credit’. It came from lack of respect & how media/people in general used it as a way to belittle me,” she wrote.

“It was the typical “every talented woman there’s always a stronger & more talented man behind her. I recorded the song because it’s a good song. I think that’s all that should matter,” she added. “I said it was my song during the fader interview because it IS my song. The song wouldn’t have been the same if someone else recorded it (I’m not just saying that because I made minor changes).”

Ferreira attempted to conclude her string of tweets by saying she was “done talking about something that’s over 3 years old” but then took the chance to respond to Stereogum‘s comparison of the Everything Is Embarrassing case to the recent dispute over writing credits for Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. “One more thing: Blurred Lines & Everything Is Embarrassing. No,” she wrote. See the full thread below.

When he’s not making his own music under the Blood Orange moniker, Dev Hynes spends his time writing hits for other artists including Florence and the Machine, Solange and, of course, Sky Ferreira. He is credited as a co-writer of Everything Is Embarrassing, alongside Ferreira and producer Ariel Rechtshaid.

For their part, Rechtshaid and Hynes don’t seem upset by the leaked tracks, with Rechtshaid responding to Ferreira’s Twitter shout-out by saying that the three of them are the “dream. team”. Hynes took it step further, tweeting a photo of Nancy Regan flanked by dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolph Nureyev, with the hashtag, #thedream.

Amongst the other leaked demos were two rejected tracks Dev Hynes recorded for Britney Spears for her 2013 record, Britney Jean. While neither made the final cut, an anonymous SoundCloud user has published them online.

Speaking to The Guardian about the ill-fated collaboration last year, Hynes said he was a solid Britney fan and blamed some in her camp for retreating to a more commercially safe option in the album’s executive producer Will.i.am.

“It’s funny – the people in charge of a lot of these artists…I don’t want to say they’re not real people, but it’s not a fan sensibility. I feel like that’s what makes the best music, when people are a fan of the person they’re working with.”

Listen to the demos and see all the tweets below.