"Bad Taste" is Freya Skye's lighthearted, sarcastic confession about her questionable taste in partners. Skye finds herself drawn to guys with complicated lives and red flags that come with their own warning label. She embraces the trouble:
You call it problematic
I call it gotta have it
I like a boy with baggage
She also admits to being a "sucker for a pretty face" and a "sucker for a mistake."
The track showcases a more playful side to her songwriting. "'Bad Taste' is the first time I was a bit less serious,"
Skye explained to Billboard. "What meets the eye is just like a playful, kind of sarcastic tone that I've never gone into before."
The joke, however, is partly on Skye herself. "I love talking about other people in my songs too," she said. "I've done that for a long time, like picking at people who suck. But sometimes I suck too. And I have to acknowledge that."
Skye co-wrote "Bad Taste" with Andre Davidson, Sean Davidson, Bill Maybury, and Annie Schindel. Maybury previously co-wrote Cian Ducrot's "Everyone Who Falls In Love (Has Someone Else They're Thinking Of)," while Schindel co-penned Chappell Roan's "
Red Wine Supernova."
The Monarch, the moniker used by Andre and Sean Davidson, handled production. The American sibling production duo's resumé includes Zara Larsson and David Guetta's "
On My Love," Meek Mill and Nicki Minaj's "
All Eyes on You," Rita Ora's UK #1 "
How We Do (Party)," and six tracks on Kelly Clarkson's
Meaning of Life album.
Skye debuted "Bad Taste" live during her acoustic headline show in New York City in December 2025, which launched her short The Acoustic Shows tour. The stripped-back setup felt far more exposed than playing with a full production crew behind her. "It was my first ever headline show I'd ever done, and I was in New York," she told Billboard. "It was quite exposed and vulnerable."
Hearing the crowd sing along by the final chorus convinced her the song needed an official release: "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.'"
An awkward twist followed. When Skye released her debut EP, Stardust, in February 2026, "Bad Taste" was nowhere on the tracklist. Fans noticed. "I saw my fans' reaction, how they were like, 'Oh, we're so excited, but where's Bad Taste?'" she recalled. "I knew it was something that they really, really wanted to have to be able to listen to."
The track grew into a massive fan favorite as she kept playing it on her Stars Align Tour. That live momentum finally convinced her label to give it a formal studio release on September 16, 2026.
Capturing the song's live energy in a studio setting proved tricky. "I had a really hard time establishing how the studio version should sound," Skye told Billboard. "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."
Her solution was to perform the whole song in full takes to keep the physical rush of a live gig alive. That meant jumping around and ad-libbing in the booth to keep it spontaneous.
The music video was directed by Sophie Hm and filmed in Lancaster, California. Skye wanted it to play like a "mini movie" with recurring characters and subtle details to catch on repeat views. "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 explained.
The clip starts with Skye riding shotgun down the highway before devolving into a full-scale food fight at a roadside diner. Filming the diner chaos was a highlight for her, even if combining the California heat and high heels with airborne milkshakes presented a few messy hazards. "It was so hot, but I'm in these heels and I have a milkshake and I throw it at his car," she recalled. "And then you have everyone in the diner rush out. They're all throwing food at the car."
