This past summer, Sky Ferreira was getting ready to perform a sold-out show at the Sydney Opera House when she received an email from someone claiming to work at the indie film distributor A24.
“At first I assumed it wasn’t real,” Ferreira tells Vogue. “I’m always getting weird emails from people trying to steal my music by claiming to be someone important, so I just glossed over it at first.”
Eventually, however, Halina Reijn did manage to get in touch. The filmmaker was in the process of editing Babygirl, her second film with A24 after the sleeper hit Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, and thought Ferreira would be the perfect artist to contribute an original song to the soundtrack.
“Sky’s songs are so sensual and empowering,” Reijn says. “She perfectly embodies the duality of gracious femininity and the dark beast inside, which is the theme at the heart of Babygirl.”
In theaters this Christmas, Babygirl stars Nicole Kidman as a high-powered CEO who puts her career and family life at risk when she enters a sadomasochistic affair with an intern at her company played by Harris Dickinson. What may sound like a tawdry erotic thriller on the surface, however, is really a film about female sexual desire and power dynamics. It features the most exciting performance Kidman has given since Birth, playing a woman both enthralled and unsettled by her newfound desires and what it means for her to give up control—and, to cap things off, a new Sky Ferreira song plays as the credits begin to roll.
Out this Thursday, “Leash” was conceived specifically for Babygirl. Co-produced by Jorge Elbrecht, it stands as one of Ferreira’s most assertive pop tracks, building on the industrial synths and scuzzy guitars of her previous single, the ’80s pop-inspired “Don’t Forget.” “I tore apart this veil of shame, I fought so hard, just to be erased,” Ferreira belts on the track. “Wanna be caught, pulled down in flames, I know I’ll never get my way.”