She’s got the [7.40] market damn near cornered…

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[7.40]

Thomas Inskeep: This is one of those alternate-universe smash pop hits. Ariel Rechtshaid’s production isn’t so far off from his work with HAIM, albeit simultaneously a little more poppy and a little more crackly-and-poppy. It wouldn’t mean anything, however, if this wasn’t an incredibly well-constructed song with a super-catchy, weird chorus, which for some reason makes me think of a more straightforward Bjork. I get why Miley Cyrus picked Sky as an opening act; Sky is almost the through-the-indie-looking-glass version of Miley herself. In Miley’s hands, “I Blame Myself” would likely be a lot more high-gloss, but it benefits from not getting that treatment. This gets better with each listen.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Night Time, My Time is mostly ’90s-aping alt-rock produced intentionally muddy — “mixed” like cement in pails; it’s like listening to the Buffy soundtrack on busted speakers. “I Blame Myself” is the exception and standout: spare, sparse, not much but synth chords and percussion sharp as pricks. Dev Hynes didn’t cowrite this one, but if “Everything Is Embarrassing” had a sequel, this would be it. Ferreira’s also a cowriter, and you can hear her (probably label-jail acquired) songwriting training in the prechorus, how she spools out syllables: “underneath it all, I know it’s not your fault, that you don’t understand,” one hedge after another, like diagramming a sentence in slow motion — then, landing like a blow, the title. (It’s a useful songwriting technique — Kelly Clarkson’s “Miss Independent” does it on the verses — and Ferreira uses a similar one at the end of the chorus, “reputation” hammered past the chorus’s bounds.) The trick only works with lyrics worth showcasing, and Ferreira’s are merciless; the line that strikes me most is “it’s like talking to a friend who’s trying to be a lover.” This is a thing that may happen to you as a woman in male fields — a certain sizing up, a gaze that hangs heavy in rooms (perhaps it should be called the male haze.) And every time you talk about you get strange looks, polite social distancing, until even I thought I was making it up (sick thing to make up, right?) — but here it is, documented proof, in the world’s most persuasive form: a pop song. Or a pop song title. “I Blame Myself” doesn’t deal in platitudes; the title addresses everyone spitting at Ferreira and her ilk — label execs, comments sections, panoptical social media, op-eds aimed at millennials already covered in their own acidic self-loathing — and spits the venom right back: OK, I blame myself. I have now done what you said, thought everything you told me to think about myself — now what? I’ve said I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t get “I Blame Myself,” but that was before the video. (Ferreira’s videos have always been bad: Terry Richardson, drugsploitation, this. One wonders how “LoveGame” would have fared in the fast-outrage news machine, or whether the “shoppable video” flaks — the angle that was planned to be the peg — even knew.) But either way, Sky provides the vocabulary. I love songs like this: underneath it all, I know it’s not your fault that you don’t understand “I Blame Myself.”
[10]

Megan Harrington: I’ve logged many hours with Sky Ferreira’s debut and “I Blame Myself” never gets any easier. I suppose it’s considerate of Ferreira to graft her miserable story (“10 years old without a voice”) and internalization of music exec rhetoric (“I blame myself for my reputation”) onto some major chords and ascendant synth lines so that anyone who wanted to (those same execs) could ignore her words and have her promote this as a single, dimwittedly verifying everything the song claims. I find the balance between the backing track’s sparkle and Ferreira’s pain an uneasy strike, but I respect her vulnerability. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: The simplicity of effects adducing her confidence, she lays out a story of self-loathing in which lust and hate tangle. Over and over those synth pulses beep; over and over the percussion program crackles, a pattern without end, vituperation without resolution. It also tips its hat to Veruca Salt, Belly, Afghan Whigs — a certain kind of nineties college rock, but with a transparency suggesting Ferreira has listened to them sideways.
[8]

Anthony Easton: I like how far off this sounds; it’s an expansive echo into the failures of relationships, and the prickly production outside that echo is just so self-loathing that it might be slightly more aware than most of this post-disco era. This is like hangover music after years of pleasure.
[7]

Jer Fairall: The lyric reads like a preemptive strike against controversy, calculated enough that she felt the need to throw a ridiculously misguided video (did Miley sell her on the virtues of using African Americans as props during one of their backstage conversations?) on top of the drug charges and that brilliantly troubling album cover photo. Still, all of the above (well, not so much the drug bust) highlight what it is that makes Sky Ferreira the most fascinating of the latest batch of pop upstarts: a willingness to use discomfort to her advantage. Her delivery here is achingly vulnerable, defensiveness spiralling into pleading self-pity by the time she reaches the climax of the chorus, but she is fully aware of how we are reacting. It all might feel like emotional pornography were it not so effectively crafted, both in terms of her command over the uneasy contradictions of the text and in her impeccable sense of pop drama, the sheer momentum of this thing steamrolling over any objections one might have to the shamelessness of her approach. 
[7]

Juana Giaimo: Trying to desperately victimize herself, Sky Ferreira shows us her most egocentric facet through immature lyrics in a rather dull melody that only highlights a voice that isn’t very engaged to her inner struggles.
[5]

Mallory O’Donnell: Sky’s album has tunes for days, but this one has karaoke gold written all over it, with a great clomping beat and percolating, moody keys that travel from vaguely uplifting to slightly eerie as the vocal grows in intensity. Said vocal is delivered with enough naive exuberance that countless others will want to have a stab after one too many frozen drinks. That should be enough. The video is whatever. 
[8]

Brad Shoup: It’s a little like Around the World in a Day, but with more recrimination and a softer drum track. Not that the drums are a minus; they have this dull rubbery echo. They keep trying to send Ferreira falling. But the melody’s too sturdy, too elemental.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: The wonderful bludgeoning way Ferreira sings the word “blame” shows that she’s got the right idea as a performer, but the ultra cool of the track feels too much like a sulk where “Everything Is Embarrassing” made you feel its bruises and disappointments.
[6]