March 12, 2026 |
Not for the first time, FKA twigs is trying to explain the meaning behind Eusexua. A word of her own creation, it’s variously been referred to as a flow state, a sort of nothingness and that moment before a really good orgasm.
It’s also the title of her excellent, dance-music-exploring third album, released in January 2025, which recently became the proud recipient of the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album (previous winners include the likes of Beyoncé, Charli xcx and Aphex Twin).
In order to keep the era going in a cultural climate of diminished attention spans, last November it was joined by a slightly sweatier sister record, Eusexua Afterglow. So, if Eusexua is the orgasm, then surely Afterglow is post-coital bliss? As with a lot of things in twigs’ world, it’s not that simple.
from left: dress and cape by ALAIA, Tubogas earrings in 18k yellow gold with diamonds by BVLGARI and dress by GUCCI, Horsebit earrings in yellow gold, Horsebit earrings in 18k white gold and diamonds and Horsebit ring in 18k white gold and diamonds by GUCCI
“Well, it’s important to say that Eusexua’s got nothing to do with sex,” says the singer, songwriter, producer, actor and dancer. “It’s a moment of nothingness you can experience before a good idea.” It’s 8am on a grey Thursday and we’re speaking via our laptops. The softly spoken, but endearingly steely, twigs is being prodded and preened in hair and make-up ahead of her 10 shoot, but she is currently sat behind a blank screen to “keep the mystery going”. She insists I keep my screen on. (Just before the end of the call I convince her to pop the camera on so we can say goodbye and she proudly shows off a shock of red hair.) Aware that Eusexua’s definition is perhaps still not crystal clear, she tries again: “There’s a moment of nothing before an idea, do you know what I mean? Before doing anything, even, say, cooking dinner. Sometimes when you cook dinner, you think, ‘Oh, this is so difficult’, then you just kind of lock in and all of a sudden everything becomes lyrical. That moment of nothing is Eusexua.”
from left: vest by AMERICAN VINTAGE, Tubogas earrings in 18k yellow gold with diamonds by BVLGARI and dress by MOWALOLA, Tubogas earrings in 18k yellow gold with diamonds by BVLGARI
It’s unlikely that twigs – real name Tahliah Debrett Barnett – has had much time of late to be pottering about in the kitchen. Since Eusexua’s release there’s been a European tour, a clutch of big festival shows and the creation of Afterglow, a record of shapeshifting, poppers-snorting bangers she describes perfectly as “frivolous in, like, a cunty way”. Next month her delayed US tour will finally happen (there were visa issues on the production side last year), before the Body High Tour reaches gargantuan arenas across Europe. Then there was the Grammys, which took place just days before our chat. At the start of her career, twigs was like “a rabbit in the headlights” at awards shows, but has learned to enjoy the hoopla that goes with it all, turning the red carpet into a high-art fashion show. “[The Grammys was] actually a lot more vibey than it looks on the telly. It’s not like your traditional red carpet – everyone’s just milling about and chatting. It’s quite casual, actually.” During her emotional acceptance speech, twigs referenced her winding career, one that started in 2012 with the tactile electronic experiments of EP1 and has taken in two more EPs, a playful mixtape (2022’s Caprisongs) and collaborations with everyone from The Weeknd to Fred Again via Kim and Kanye’s daughter, North West. All of her music has been anchored by her glacial vocals, which sit somewhere between a blissed-out Björk and an orgiastic soprano. Critical success has, inevitably, been weighed down by fame’s baggage; relationships with Robert Pattinson and Matty Healy have been picked apart online and in various sidebars of shame, while in 2020 her personal life was further dissected after she accused actor Shia LaBeouf of sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress (he denied the allegations and the lawsuit was settled privately last year).
bodysuit by WHITAKER MALEM
dress and cape by ALAIA, Tubogas earrings in 18k yellow gold with diamonds by BVLGARI
Longevity over instant success has always been twigs’s goal, anchored by a work ethic that’s seen her master everything from pole dancing to swordplay (she’s keen to take on mime next, and is currently learning French). “It’s more painful, the journey, but it’s so much better in the end,” she says. “I haven’t had an easy ride at all in my career, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is exactly how it was supposed to be. And I’m just honestly grateful.” Fame, she says, is a byproduct that she is very keen to keep at arm’s length. “It’s like being in a toxic relationship,” she says. “The goalposts of how to be good in it constantly shift. You’re just toeing the line, hoping that people are paying more attention to your art than what you’re having for lunch.”
Across her albums, specifically 2019’s Magdalene, which dealt with her break-up with Pattinson and the breakdown of her body following an operation to remove fibroid tumours from her uterus, and songs such as Eusexua’s Keep It, Hold It, which was written while she was keeping her abuse a secret, she’s often been brutally honest. Despite the ongoing glare of the spotlight, that’s not going to change. “If there’s something that I feel is important to express and say and get off my chest, then I’ll always do that,” she says. “That’s the one thing I think about being famous: sometimes it’s just not about you. It’s about something that’s bigger and those situations can be obviously so hard to navigate, but when everything’s said and done, I always want to come back to the work.” It’s not that she’s not an interesting person, she adds, “but the work is so much better than knowing about something that’s going on in my life. Or really, truly knowing who I am as a person.”
from left: jacket by MUGLER and dress by MOWALOLA, Tubogas earrings in 18k yellow gold with diamonds by BVLGARI
It’s the work, and her desire for it to be as good as it can possibly be, that has sustained twigs. Born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, to an English-Spanish mother and a Jamaican father she didn’t meet until she was 18, twigs learned a lot about how the world works from her Bajan stepfather. “He always told me that I had to be twice as good as the person next to me, who didn’t have my skin colour,” she says. “As a woman of colour, you don’t really have an opportunity to be lazy. You have to be much better than other types of people to get a seat at the table, to get into rooms, to be trusted, to be championed. That’s just a fact.” As a pre-teen she’d earn a scholarship to a private Catholic school, before moving to London to enrol at the Brit School aged 18. While music happened on the side, she sustained herself via jobs as a backup dancer for the likes of Kylie and Ed Sheeran, a singer at The Box Soho, and the hostess at a strip club.
As she began to fine-tune her sound, a fusion emerged between the underground, where she’s worked with some of electronic music’s most inventive figures (such as Arca, Eartheater and Koreless), and the mainstream, via A-list producers and songwriters like Stargate (Rihanna), Rick Nowels (Madonna) and Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift), which has cemented her status as one of music’s most unique practitioners. While early commercial success was elusive, Eusexua, which was also nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, peaked at number three in the UK and went top 30 in America.
left: jacket by MUGLER
dress by MOWALOLA, shoes by CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN, Tubogas earrings in 18k yellow gold with diamonds by BVLGARI
There’s a pleasingly playful disruptor element to the way twigs has carved out her career. When Afterglow was released, fans noticed the original Eusexua album had reappeared on streaming with new artwork and an altered track listing, with four new tracks added and four removed from the original version. A sense of confusion reigned. When I ask twigs why she did it, her reaction is initially bullish – “Um, why did I do it? Why not?” – but quickly becomes more nuanced, touching on the battle between streaming and physical, clearer financial remuneration and old-fashioned mischievousness. “I’m such an advocate of physical , and with vinyl and CDs and tapes, there’s a much deeper understanding for artists about how we’re getting paid,” she says. “Obviously I’m a musician, and an artist, but it is also still my job and I need to survive. With streaming it isn’t [as clear] for artists in terms of your monthly listeners, how you get paid per song or who’s listening to it.”
This opaqueness at the heart of streaming means that it is ripe for manipulation. “If streaming platforms don’t have the kind of sacred energy and reverence towards artists, then I feel like I can be more playful with them,” she adds, keen to remind me that the original, untouched version is available to stream in all its glory. “When I put out Afterglow, I felt that the DNA of Eusexua changed. But I don’t think anyone needs to be confused. It’s just not that deep.”
dress by MOWALOLA, Tubogas earrings in 18k yellow gold with diamonds by BVLGARI
As the sound of nails being clipped and make-up brushes sweeping across skin intensifies, I sense our time coming to an end. Talk turns to the future and the forthcoming tour, and why fans shouldn’t expect a typical arena show. “I’ve gone down a very different route,” she says, laughing at the idea of her flying around the O2 à la Pink or Katy Perry. She’s working with famed Belgian-French choreographer Damien Jalet and with dancers from all different backgrounds, who are “classically trained, trained in contemporary, and then specific styles like aerial pole, chains, voguing,” she says. “I’ve actively not gone down the pyrotechnics route because I’ve always had this theory that I’d rather spend the money on the talent on the stage, rather than have the fireworks.”
A throwaway query about the merch situation for the tour unlocks twigs’s anxiety vis-a-vis meticulous planning. “I’ve not done the merch yet, so thank you for reminding me,” she says, laughing. “The truth is I’ve been pretty much self-managed since Caprisongs. I don’t have someone in an LA office who I go and see and he’s like, ‘I’m gonna make you a star, baby.’ It’s not like that. I’m literally planning my album campaign at a café around the back of my house.” In the background, ripples of laughter can be heard from her team, as if to confirm that she’s not exaggerating. “It’s amazing that Eusexua has done so well and won this Grammy, and that the campaign has been [done] my way. It’s not been filled with planned viral TikTok moments where the label pays £5,000 for influencers to do a dance. I’ve not done that. I’ve done it my way and I guess the merch will be done my way as well.”
10 Magazine Issue 76 – CREATIVITY, CHANGE, FREEDOM – is out on newsstands March 18. Pre-order your copy here.
FLOW STATE
Photographer and Creative Director IB KAMARA
Fashion Editor SHAQUILLE ROSS-WILLIAMS
Talent FKA TWIGS
Text MICHAEL CRAGG
Dancers MAX COOKWARD, EDDY SOARES, EMILIANO JIMENEZ, JAMES PHU AHN VAM, JAXON WILLARD and PABLO PAULDO
Hair LOUIS SOUVESTRE
Make-up CATALINA SARTOR
Manicurist ANGEL MY LINH
Set designer SAMUEL OVERS at New School Represents
Tailor JOEL RYAN
Photographer’s assistants JOE PETINI, TEDDY PARKS and NICHOLAS BEUTLER
Fashion assistants RUI SANTOS, FATMA TYRA MAALOW, TOMMY DOWLING, ENIKAE KUSEJU IBRAHEEM and GEORGIA EDWARDS
Set design assistants HENRY HAWKSWORTH and OLIVER BELL
Casting SIMOBART CASTING
Production PHOEBE SHARDLOW at New School Represents and TOMOS MACDONNELL at IB Kamara Studios
Production assistant MADDISON SLEEUWENHOEK
Post-production HELEN RETOUCH
vest and top (worn as a skirt) by AMERICAN VINTAGE, Tubogas earrings in 18k yellow gold with diamonds by BVLGARI
