I Blame Myself

This song finds Sky Ferreira singing: "How could you know what it feels like to fight the hounds of hell You think you know me so well? I blame, I blame myself… for my reputation." She explained the lyric to Billboard magazine: "With that song it's like, I'm not the most famous person," Ferreira said. "I don't have the paparazzi harassing me every day or something, but I do a lot of things and people notice without me really thinking much about it. I have this reputation of being like a party girl or on drugs or whatever, and even though things aren't really what they seem and people don't really know anything about me… There's this whole perception of me and it's partially my fault. I don't go out of my way to change it. I'm not gonna start going around getting my hair blow dried and putting on make up every day and smiling all the time. I'm not gonna try to prove people wrong in that sense. I want my work to speak for itself. It sucks that people think bad stuff about me, but it's partially my fault and I'm well aware of that. I take full responsibility for it, even though I think a lot of it's unfair bulls--t, because no one's putting a gun to my head to do this." "I don't think anyone can possibly know how it is until they experience it.," Ferreira continued. "I don't like being exploited and I don't like people lying about me, but I put myself in this position and that's part of my job. That's part of what I have to deal with and people have to deal with worse things in the world. So it's not like "Oh feel sorry for me," because I don't feel sorry for myself at all. I wish things were different, but it's just what it is and I don't think some people can understand how it feels to be judged and told you're something that you're not."

The second verse is based off of an experience that happened to Ferreira at the age of ten when she went mute. "I went through some weird thing where I just stopped talking for two years," she explained. "I was like, 'I have nothing to say anymore, so I'm not going to talk anymore.'" At times Ferreira still feels like clamming up. "Sometimes I feel the same way," she said. "It's like, 'I should just stop talking because no one's listening to me. I've had a really big year and a lot of ups and downs and stuff and I think that sort of sums it all up in some way."

The song's music video was directed by Grant Singer who also helmed the clip for Ferreira's "Night Time, My Time." The visual casts the singer as a drug-turf enforcer protecting turf in the streets of Compton. Its depiction of her and her gang's arrest was inspired by an incident in the fall of 2013 when Ferrerira and boyfriend Zachary Cole Smith were taken into custody on a drug possession charge. "It's obviously based off real events… people always ask me questions about certain things, and it's kind of like my response," she said. "I think actions speak louder than words." The gang that Ferreira leads all happen to be black men. Some social media users called out the singer for using racial stereotypes. She responded to the criticism by posting a message on her Facebook page: "Nothing upsets me more than being called racist because that is one of the most hateful things anyone can be," Ferreira wrote. "Not only do I find it insulting towards myself but I also feel insulted for the actors & dancers & my family in the video. No, I did not use black back-up dancers as 'props'. I never have and never will look at any human being as a 'prop.'"