When Freya Skye first performed “Bad Taste” at her debut headlining show in New York in December 2025, she wasn’t sure the song would ever leave the scene of the stage.

The then-unreleased track 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.”

Then came the moment that changed her mind. “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.’”

Nearly a year later, “Bad Taste” is officially here. Skye released the playful pop anthem on Wednesday, with its cinematic music video arriving the next day (Sept. 17). The song also gets a physical release on 7-inch vinyl Friday as Skye prepares to return to the road for the next leg of her Stars Align Tour this weekend.

But the song’s journey from an acoustic debut to an official release didn’t just happen overnight.

When Skye’s Stardust EP was released without “Bad Taste” on its track list back in February, her fans made their disappointment known. “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.”

The reaction from fans pushed the song forward, especially after they had heard multiple live and acoustic iterations. Skye was ready to give them the definitive recorded version — but getting there was more complicated than she had initially anticipated.

“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.”

Eventually, she asked her team to take the live arrangement into the studio. Instead of recording individual lines over and over, Skye sang the song from top to bottom. She even brought the physicality of her live shows into the recording booth, jumping around and ad-libbing as she sang.

“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.”

The result draws a through line between the song’s original live incarnation and its studio counterpart, while still giving listeners something new.

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

The live ambiance also feeds directly into what Skye hopes listeners will take away from the song. “Bad Taste” is admittedly a bit of a departure from the more serious songwriting that exists in much of her discography, allowing her to lean into 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.”

At its core, Skye says, the song is about being willing to laugh at herself. “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.”

Finding the right balance was important to her: She didn’t want the song to become overly self-deprecating or lose its humor by taking the joke too far. In the end, she’s proud of where the song landed, and the response from fans has only reinforced the way she feels.

And as if the gift of the song wasn’t enough, “Bad Taste” is getting an equally playful music video.

Skye says music videos have been a fairly challenging part of finding her artistic identity, but the new video gave her an opportunity to embrace something she has loved since she was young: telling stories.

“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 “Bad Taste” video, she explains, is intended to feel more like a “mini movie,” filled with characters, continuity and small details that reward multiple watchings. It’s also a direction she hopes to carry in the future of her music videos.

One of her favorite scenes to film involved a food fight at the end of the video. Shot in Lancaster, California, in the middle of the desert, Skye throws a milkshake at a car before a group of people from the nearby diner rushes out and joins in, hurling 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.”

While “Bad Taste” might feel like a new beginning to fans who have been waiting for its official release, Skye sees it a little differently. The song isn’t part of her forthcoming album. Instead, she considers it a final punctuation mark on the Stardust era.

“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.

For Skye, moving forward means embracing a fresh start. So instead of serving a taste (no pun intended) of what’s coming next, Skye says “Bad Taste” is “more like a goodbye to the [Stars Align] chapter.”

That part of the story may be closing, but Skye isn’t leaving the era’s songs behind. She’ll continue performing them as she expands the Stars Align Tour into Latin America and Asia in 2027, bringing her live show to Mexico City, Bogotá, Santiago, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Bangkok, Singapore, Manila, Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei, ahead of the arrival 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.