Freya Skye Releases Music Video for Live Fan Favorite “Bad Taste”

Freya Skye released her pop anthem “Bad Taste” on Wednesday, following its cinematic music video on Sept. 17 and a 7-inch vinyl release on Friday, as she prepares to return to the next leg of her Stars Align Tour this weekend.

Skye first performed the song at her debut headlining show in New York in December 2025, when it was stripped back to just Skye and her guitarist, Donnie. “I remember being terrified,” Skye tells Billboard. “It was my first ever headline show I’d ever done, and I was in New York … It was quite exposed and vulnerable.”

The crowd changed her mind about releasing it. “By the last chorus, [the crowd] was singing the words and I was like, ‘Well this is great. I feel way less alone by the end,’” she recalls. “If I was ever on the fence of releasing it, which honestly I was before I had performed it, it was in that moment I was like, ‘Oh, well, this has to be a thing. This has to come out.’”

When Skye’s Stardust EP arrived in February without the track, fans voiced their disappointment. “I saw my fans’ reaction, how they were like, ‘Oh, we’re so excited, but where’s “Bad Taste”?’” she says. “I knew it was something that they really, really wanted to have to be able to listen to.”

Developing a studio version proved difficult. “I had a really hard time establishing how the studio version should sound,” she says. “Sometimes some things sound great live, but there’s an energy and an electricity in it that you can’t replicate on a recorded version.”

She ultimately had her team bring the live arrangement into the studio, singing from top to bottom while incorporating the physical energy of her concerts by jumping around and ad-libbing.

“I think something that’s so important to the song is the energy and the life that’s in it,” she explains. “I think the energy over a ‘perfection’ or ‘on paper’ vocal [makes it] uninteresting.”

“Even on the last leg of the Stars Align Tour, ‘Bad Taste’ was my favorite,” she adds.

The track departs from the serious songwriting in much of her catalog, allowing for sarcasm, humor, and self-awareness. “’Bad Taste’ is the first time I was a bit less serious,” she says. “What meets the eye is just like a playful, kind of sarcastic tone that I’ve never gone into before.”

“I love talking about other people in my songs too. I’ve done that for a long time, like picking at people who suck,” she says. “But sometimes I suck too. And I have to acknowledge that.”

For the music video, Skye wanted to embrace storytelling. “I love something that takes you on a journey and gives you a story that you can add up with the song and be like, ‘Oh, OK, I see the whole thing now,’” she says.

The mini-movie video features characters, continuity, and details intended to reward multiple viewings. One favorite scene involved a food fight shot in Lancaster, California, where Skye throws a milkshake at a car before diners rush out to hurl food at the vehicle.

“It was so hot, but I’m in these heels and I have a milkshake and I throw it at his car,” she says. “And then you have everyone in the diner rush out. They’re all throwing food at the car.”

Skye views the track as a final punctuation mark on the Stardust era rather than part of her upcoming album.

“When I performed ‘Bad Taste’ at my acoustic shows with the other Stardust songs and discussing where ‘Bad Taste’ fits in the picture, I couldn’t see blending it into the next chapter,” she says.

Instead of previewing what comes next, Skye calls “Bad Taste” “more like a goodbye to the [Stars Align] chapter.”

She will continue performing the era’s songs when the Stars Align Tour expands to Latin America and Asia in 2027, visiting Mexico City, Bogotá, Santiago, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Bangkok, Singapore, Manila, Tokyo, Seoul, and Taipei, ahead of her return as Nova in Disney’s ZOMBIES 5 next summer.

“Hopefully [‘Bad Taste’] can get people excited for the next shift,” Skye says. “I think that’s going to be more — not drastic, but I do think it will feel more elevated than anything before.”

Watch the full “Bad Taste” music video below.