This surprised me, to see FKA Twigs on the cover of the May issue of Allure. While I know who KFA Twigs is and I have for several years now, it’s my feeling that there’s something about her that is still underground, still subversive and NOT mainstream. But here she is on the cover of a magazine they carry at the grocery store. Which isn’t to say her interview is a typical piece of press from an up-and-coming singer, although she does deign to talk about some of her styling choices and makeup choices, etc. You can read the full interview here. Some highlights:
She just found out she could get expensive facials: “I didn’t realize until about six months ago that people, if they’re singers or actors, they go and have facials and massages and stuff like that. I only just found out.”
Whether she’s okay with nudity: “Yes, when there is a purpose behind it. I feel frustrated when there isn’t. It’s also sad. Trust me, I could take a picture and my bum could look crazy, like a hip-hop honey, but that’s not reality. I used to get anxiety because of that…of what women think it is to be a woman.”
She knows she’s cryptic: “I don’t mean to be a tough interview but I can understand why people might think that.”
Realizing she didn’t have to ask for permission: “I think one of the most painful things I went through making my record is realizing that you don’t have to ask permission. You don’t have to ask permission to do a video saying something that you want to say. All you can do is follow your instincts…”
She can still do her own hair & makeup: “I’m a traditional showgirl in a sense. I spent years of my early 20s working among performance artists. That’s rule one of being an underground artist: You do your own makeup, hair, and costumes.”
Some shade for artists who don’t know how to do things: “Imagine if you were an artist that wasn’t being herself. Imagine you’re an artist that didn’t know how to do your own makeup, didn’t know how to do your own hair, didn’t know how to put an outfit together, didn’t write your own music, didn’t direct your own videos, didn’t produce your own music. They’re not artists. They’re vehicles, vessels. The majority of them are like that… Imagine how hard that must be.”
Don’t label her. “I don’t want to be described as anything. It’s like hashtags. Hashtag this, hashtag that. Hashtag blue, hashtag pink, hashtag cute dogs. Do you know what I mean? Everything has a hashtag.”
She gave away her necklace at the end of the interview: “Here. I want to give you this. The quartz helps with clarity.”
The Allure writer makes note of the fact that they did not ask Twigs directly about Robert Pattinson because it felt “sexist, heteronormative, retrograde, wholly beside the point, and frankly insane to ask about her famous beau.” But… Rob would have been asked about Twigs in an interview? As for the possible/probable shade Twigs threw at artists who aren’t really creating art… that’s a theme with her, and something she’s discussed in other interviews. She’s sad and disgusted by the so-called pop stars who don’t understand the history of what they’re doing, who don’t write their own material, who are “vessels” for other people’s ideas. I sort of co-sign her shade. I mean, I don’t think every pop star or artist needs to know how to do their own makeup AND hair AND costumes and produce and direct their own music, but at the bare minimum, they should know how to do at least three of those things.
Photos courtesy of Allure.
Wow. I am very impressed with her. And she is so striking…it’s hard to look away from her. And I adore that she describes herself as a “traditional showgirl”. So smart.
Much hands. Very Arte.
i know you want us to throw some shade her way with how the headline is framed. But, I think she’s right. And she didn’t say all, she said there are some artists who are told what to do, wear and look. And you can’t deny its validity. But she was referring to her own learning experiences of struggling to make it and needing to be independent. Can’t find fault in that. Still a fan of underground industry favorite artist. twigs.
She looks so beautiful there. Its a must read into as well.
While I am not a fan of her music, I find it refreshing to hear someone on the platform actually talk about the art of making music.
I’m in between eyerolling and respecting this. She has a point, but there are lots of artists that can’t direct videos and they aren’t ‘vessels’. That’s a skill that not all have and I’m not convinced she does either, but respect for having a vision and trying. Overall, I don’t find her or her music/art to be groundbreaking or all that original so she seems kinda pretentious to me. I also highly doubt that she does everything without some sort of collaborator so these kinds of statements can come back and bite her later. “Imagine how hard that must be.”–this one is condescending and self congratulatory. The part about asking for permission sounds majorly fishy. That’s just NOT how the music biz works at all, even for rock and roll legends (Prince for example) and does extend to the indie world. I think that’s either not true or her higher ups are good at letting her think something was her idea. So yeah, I’m back and forth with this girl. Doing it all =/= great talent.
+1
And: “I didn’t realize until about six months ago that people, if they’re singers or actors, they go and have facials and massages and stuff like that. I only just found out.”
does that mean that she only now found out that celebs get stuff for free? Has she been living on a high horse in an underground bubble?
I went back and forth on this a little bit, too, but I think I’m landing on respect. Especially in light of all the memorializing of all that Prince created, it makes you realize how few artists are truly groundbreaking. But that doesn’t make everyone else’s work invalid. She is more about the art than the trappings, I think, for sure.
Oops didn’t mean to imply that her work was invaild. “Groundbreaking” seems to be thrown around a lot in the press about her work though, and IMO it just isn’t. She’s like a Millennial version of Tricky to me. Doesn’t make it bad or irrelevant, just not what it’s said to be and that irritates me. So my irritation might be misdirected but then I get the impression that she’s bought in to that press and it comes across in interviews, hence the eyerolling. But then she is right about some things, and undeniably talented so respect there. She’s my current conundrum lol
It’s interesting that you bring up Prince, because my husband and I were musing the recent loss of legends like Prince and David Bowie, and wondering who would be the icons for the current and future generations? And we really couldn’t come up with anyone current who is not only extremely popular, but who is also a truly groundbreaking musician and artist through and through, like Bowie and Prince and countless others who have already passed. What we did keep coming up with were examples of some very famous pop musicians who aren’t particularly skilled musically, whose music is written for them, and who hire choreographers and production designers to create their shows. So I think I get what FKA Twigs is talking about here!
I think she has a point, especially regarding female artists. Female pop stars have tended to be very manufactured. Someone writes their songs, chooses their band, choreographs their moves, develops their look for them. Not all of course, but many of today’s female stars fall into this trap, especially when they are starting out. I think her point is that she’s trying to learn how to do these things on her own, to be her own person with her own vision, even if she’s sacrificing “mainstream” success. I’d like to see more young women in music doing this. I think there’s a big opportunity for it right now.
I actually sort of like what she’s saying here…seems to me like she might be using hair, makeup and costumes as metaphors for bigger, more significant things that make performers be what they are. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it haha 🙂
Yes. Manufacturing an image and actually living that life are two different things. Miley can front like she’s an underground indie artist living in a one bedroom flat with ten of her artist friends, but she’s not, and she never has been. She’s been a pampered manufactured product since she was a child. There’s authenticity in having to do it alone and knowing how to do it on your own.
I love her, she’s extremely talented, original and she expresses herself rather than performing what somebody else tells her. She’s also beautiful.
I don’t know what to think of her. I hope she doesn’t take herself too seriously. I do agree with her about a hashtag thing.
Does she mean she just found out she can get facials for free or at all?
I’m interpreting the facials/etc comment to mean, that she didn’t realize that was the maintenance that these women do. They really don’t just use Neutrogena Face Wash and tinted moisturizer and just go.
i’m adoring her.
She’s beautiful, but I’m so sick of her mouth hanging open 98% of the time.
Judging from some of her other photos, I think she might actually have an overbite. Her front teeth tend to stick out a bit (buckteeth, if we want to be blunt), so it might actually be more comfortable to have her lips slightly parted than fully closed. My teeth have a slight midline shift where the middle teeth overhang over the bottom ones slightly, and I’ll sometimes rest them on my lip without realizing it as a way of balancing them.
“Imagine you’re an artist that didn’t know how to do your own makeup, didn’t know how to do your own hair, didn’t know how to put an outfit together, didn’t write your own music, didn’t direct your own videos, didn’t produce your own music. They’re not artists. They’re vehicles, vessels. The majority of them are like that… Imagine how hard that must be.”
I might get flamed for this, but when I read that, the person who immediately came to mind was Britney.
Britney actually is a killer dancer though and can actually choreograph her own routines.
I can see some of her youth coming out here in the kind of eyerolly way that some of us think we’re above it all when we’re young, but she’s obviously got a lot of talent and though put into her work that comes out in her interviews. I think there’s a lot of room for growth and development, but it will all be progression forward and up rather than backwards.
It makes sense to try to do all those things, so you know how it’s done, but there’s no shame in realizing at some point that you can work with someone else who does some of it better. Teamwork is ok. The problem is when someone is totally manufactured from the very beginning and doesn’t know how to judge quality and has no or little input into the final result.
She did it all because she couldn’t afford to hire other people to do it for her, and found out she was good at it and enjoyed it and wanted that kind of control over the entire process. So for her, it became an important part of her personal art.
The idea that performers have to write their own songs is relatively recent and has resulted in a lot of poor and mediocre songs. Performance and songwriting are two different things and not everyone does both well. Nobody expects a violinist in an orchestra to write the symphony. The composer and the musicians are all important to the overall process, but they can be different people.
Ditto. And Twigs isn’t that good at singing – her voice is weak and trembling. She better make up her mind and stick to something she does best – choreographing or maybe songwriting and leave performing to real singers.