Marcel Winatschek

Before the Stranger Edge

Sky Ferreira was barely eighteen when One came out—already signed to Capitol Records, already being positioned as the next pop thing out of Los Angeles. The track was exactly what that setup implied: clean production, a self-possessed vocal, teenage longing rendered in the most polished packaging money could buy. What stayed with me was less the song than the sense that she was going to do something more interesting with all of this eventually. She did. But One was the before-picture—a very good pop single from someone who hadn’t yet found her stranger edge.