In a cold, oak-paneled boardroom at Sotheby’s, deep in Mayfair, FKA twigs looks out of place. She’s wrapped in a “worn-out, Japanese blue” dancer’s body stocking and a matching knee-length zip-up hoodie; it’s the colour she’s been living in for months because “she doesn’t say anything” but “she always looks good”.
The 36-year-old singer speaks softly, stands 5ft 1in and has a petite build, and looks otherworldly – her make-up-free skin glows and her head is shaved except for a braided ponytail at the back, an ancient Egyptian style she adopted after her father (a musician she didn’t meet until she was 18) told her she was “part Egyptian”. “I grew up in Gloucestershire”, she reminds me immediately, “and live a simple life with my partner in East London”.
We’re talking because, after four traumatic years, twigs (real name Tahliah Debrett Barnett) has returned to the music business, released the first track and music video for her new album Eusexua and performed The Eleven, a two-week dance performance that’s currently on display in a gallery room next door in all its groaning, unchoreographed glory. “I’ve been on a huge healing journey for the past few years. I’ve really had to learn how to use my body and live in it,” she says.
In 2020, she filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles accusing her ex-boyfriend of nine months, Transformers actor Shia LaBeouf, of “relentless abuse” including sexual assault, assault and infliction of emotional distress. A trial date is set for October 14 next month. In the lawsuit, she alleges that LaBeouf threw her against a car, choked her awake, endangered her life by threatening to crash the car they were in, and knowingly gave her an STD. LaBeouf denies all allegations and has said he did not cause any harm to the singer.
“It’s funny because I think healing is a bit of an ugly word, especially for the British. It’s a bit of a pain in the back,” twigs says. “But I think it’s a really beautiful thing, because I believe we’re always healing and it doesn’t stop. I’ve changed a lot in the last five years. I feel really settled with the people around me now.” She has been in long-term, high-profile relationships with American photographer and director Jordan Hemingway since 2022, then with Matty Healy of The 1975 (2020-2022) and Robert Pattinson (2014-2017).
Regardless of her personal life, twigs is a music powerhouse and one of London’s biggest exports, with 2.7 million monthly Spotify listeners. She grew up in Cheltenham with her mother, a salsa dancer and teacher, and went to the fee-based St Edwards School on a scholarship, then to the Brits and then Croydon College, where she gained experience as a back-up dancer.
Her debut studio album, LP1, was released a decade ago and its celebration of the queer and voguing community catapulted her into the mainstream. She released Magdalene in 2019, on which she “really delved into my femininity”. The video for her song Cellophane featured pole dancing, which shocked some. She has embraced the conversation and spoken out about her experiences of sex work, hostessing and set up a £30,000 GoFundMe to raise money for strippers and sex workers, who have been hit hard by the pandemic in 2020.
Don’t mistake her album hiatus (she released her debut mixtape, Caprisongs, in 2022) for a shyness about putting herself in the spotlight. In January, she went viral after condemning the Advertising Standards Authority’s decision to ban a Calvin Klein advert that showed her naked and claimed it presented her as a “stereotypical sex object”.
“People have always been very angry about women of color promoting a strong, gorgeous body,” she says today. In March, the ASA partially reversed its ban. “I have a thick skin at this point, but I am upset that my sisters Eartha Kitt, Grace Jones and Josephine Baker did the same thing and it didn’t seem to make a difference. We haven’t moved forward.” In April, she made history when she testified to the US Senate about the threat posed by artificial intelligence to the exploitation of artists’ work. “I felt very humbled,” she says. “It really did make a difference.”
Her new album is less political. “It came about three years ago when I went to Prague and experienced techno music and had a deeper relationship with dance music. I felt Eusexua on the dance floor,” she says. Eusexua is a word she coined to describe “that moment of nothingness right before a big wave of inspiration, creativity or passion.” “I describe it as the moment before the orgasm.”
One of his team members advised against naming an album with a made-up word that wasn’t search engine optimized. “A lot of artists do really well when they name their project something that’s actually another project and people stumble upon it,” he was told. “I knew right away that I couldn’t work with that person anymore,” he says dismissively.
Her long-running performance at Sotheby’s saw Eusexua celebrated in 11 steps, and managed to attract the coolest art-and-raver types from far south and east London to the luxury auction house. They watched as Twigs and her entourage staggered around a white dance floor, moaning, crying, rolling on the floor and banging their collarbones to the point of complete exhaustion. It was a magnificent thing to watch. “The exhibition is free, so people can come and learn. If they find it useful, that would make me very happy. If you don’t, you might find it abstract and different… you know?” she chuckled.
In another room, her sketchbooks were displayed. On one sad piece of paper, the phrase “My body is what it was before something bad happened to it” was written over and over again.
Releasing new material doesn’t affect him. “I’ve been making music for a long time. I feel very comfortable,” he says. “Music goes away and comes back. People don’t like it, then they get obsessed with it, then they decide it’s garbage. I’m older now and I feel a little more practiced. But the funny thing is, in the same breath I still feel like I’m starting over.”
I wonder if being famous—she has all the bells and whistles: 2.5 million Instagram followers, calls Madonna her best friend, is a regular at the Met Gala, and appeared on the cover of British Vogue this April—has helped her, she says. “Everyone is a famous person. There are cat pages on Instagram that have more followers than me. I don’t really know what fame means, but I do know what cultural impact means.”
At the core of everything he does—releasing music, holding truth to power, embracing his inner agitator—he says he’s actually trying to change the world around him. “I love changing the cultural DNA. It’s just that little molecule, and then you see it start to spread and people’s opinions change.”
For example? “To really play a small part in changing people’s ideas about pole dancing, sex work, voguing, the queer scene. Then about people of color. Then about domestic violence survivors. Then about the way people move their bodies, the way people dress, and how you should do your makeup or your hair,” she explains. “To be a small part of that change — I feel lucky.”
Are we lucky? Good luck, twigs.
FKA twigs’ long-form work, The Eleven, ends today at Sotheby’s. She’ll be performing from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Her new album, Eusexua, is out next January.
FKA’s must-have playlist
Eusexual, 2024
Forget Brat summer, they’re already calling it Eusexua autumn.
Cellophane, 2019
The breakup anthem of old. Pole dance video changed the conversation.
Two Weeks, 2014
Sending it into the stratosphere.
Papi Pacify, 2013
Sincere, seductive – a favorite of many twigs fans.