\n\t\this past summer, when FKA Twigs<\/a> stepped offstage after playing a giant festival in the Netherlands, the first thing on her mind was heading to a techno haven she\u2019d heard had the best electronic music in the area. The British artist \u2014 known for her genre-bending sounds and gravity-defying dance moves \u2014 made her way there straight from her set, dressed in the same bright-red leather jacket and leather pants she\u2019d worn while performing.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cOnstage, it looked incredible, but when you leave the stage, I kind of look like a Power Ranger,\u201d she remembers, laughing lightly. When she got to the club, the woman at the door was far from impressed. \u201cShe was like, \u2018Have you been here before?\u2019 And I was like, \u2018No,\u2019 in my Power Rangers outfit.\u201d The doorwoman asked if Twigs knew who was DJ\u2019ing that night \u2014 another no. \u201cAnd she was like, \u2018Well, you\u2019re going to have to stand to the side and read the club rules and memorize all the DJs.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tTwigs did as she was told, and stood outside until the woman came back. \u201cI got in, but it was funny because she looked at me, and she was like, \u2018You\u2019ve never been out before.\u2019 I wasn\u2019t going to do the whole, \u2018I was just headlining this festival.\u2019 I was like, \u2018I\u2019ll just take it on the chin and do the work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s stories like that \u2014 about moments outside the club, the euphoria of the dance floor, the hours late in the night at the afterparty \u2014 that shape Eusexua<\/a>, from January, and Eusexua Afterglow<\/a>, which came out in November. Those two standout albums are a big reason Rolling Stone named Twigs one of our Voices of the Year<\/a> for 2025. Together they mark an inventive new chapter in Twigs\u2019 decade-long career, which has already made her one of pop\u2019s most wildly imaginative stars, known for her futuristic vision and boundless imagination.<\/p>\n \n\tBut Twigs has also bared it all for fans throughout her career, speaking up about the traumas and tribulations she\u2019s gone through, and pouring her most vulnerable thoughts into her music while opening up about everything from complex sexual dynamics to dealing with racism to having fibroid surgery. Outside of music, she\u2019s also come forward about being in an abusive relationship, and had to manage herself after a \u201ctouring disaster\u201d \u2014 her team at the time didn\u2019t secure visas and paperwork in time, leading her to cancel Coachella and reschedule multiple shows \u2014 that nearly derailed her career.<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\tDespite all of it, Twigs has had a breakthrough year, after a long time working her way to the top. During her Rolling Stone Interview, she opens up about her identity, her approach to vulnerability, and all she\u2019s had to overcome to get to where she is today.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tYou just released Eusexua Afterglow, which is a continuation of your 2025 album Eusexua. What was it about this era of your music that made you think, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m not quite done. There are more stories to be told here?\u201d \n\tThe majority of the [Afterglow] songs were brand new, so I\u2019d say a good 80 to 85 percent I made in a two-month period. A couple of them were ideas I had for a long time. For example, \u201cWild and Alone,\u201d I began to write that 10 years ago, and that actually leaked. I had this huge leaking disaster where I had 85 demos leak, and that was one of the ones that leaked. So, then I reimagined it, so it sounded different. When it was finished, I was like, \u201cOh, I think PinkPantheress would sound incredible on this\u201d.<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cStereo Boy\u201d is from something that I started a few years ago, but everything else was in this incredible, six-week period of purging and inspiration and being very free and meeting some incredible new collaborators. I met this amazing artist producer and quite underground and respected techno DJ called Manni Dee, and we linked up through an artist friend of mine. Manni and I just went on this crazy music-making \u2026 it was just weeks and weeks of us being in the studio. I felt like we took over each other\u2019s lives for six weeks and started creating. It\u2019s all just been very natural. I\u2019m just going with the flow.<\/p>\n \n\tTell me a little bit about the experiences that inspired these songs, especially the club experience that\u2019s central to both Eusexua and Eusexua Afterglow. \n\tAnd then there\u2019s this other side of my personality which is like, \u201cI will rile up a party, I will make everyone go out I\u2019ll make everyone stay out till the early hours of the morning.\u201d Afterglow, it\u2019s about when you leave the club, and you don\u2019t want to go home. It starts with \u201cLove Crimes,\u201d and then it goes into this fun kind of sexy stage of the music. Like, \u201cWhoa, I\u2019m feeling fucked up now.\u201d It\u2019s at that moment where you start questioning everything in your life, and people start leaving. You know, when you\u2019re just out and you\u2019re like, \u201cI\u2019m having such a good time,\u201d and then you move rooms and you\u2019re just like, \u201cWhoa, I shouldn\u2019t have left that room.\u201d People join the room, and you\u2019re like, \u201cNow the energy is changed,\u201d or people leave the room, and you\u2019re like, \u201cNo, I need those people. I need to stay with these people. We have to stay together all night.\u201d The second third of the record is that when you\u2019re reckoning with yourself, and it\u2019s wavy.<\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019ve described Eusexua as \u201cfinding a euphoric space where you can transcend your physical human form.\u201d Why was it important for you to do that? \n\tI can\u2019t even imagine what that\u2019s like now for young people, just to have the pressure of creating this self online that is imprinted from when you\u2019re 12, 13, to then when you get your first job, and every political stance that you have, every idea that you had at 16, every person that you dated, every person that you were friends with, the way that you dressed, the ideas that you were starting to form as a young person, all of that is just tracked. And you can be ridiculed for it or torn apart or judged at any second. I have felt that pressure as well.<\/p>\n \n\tWhen I think about Eusexua, it\u2019s about accepting yourself and accepting other people. It\u2019s about tolerance, and it\u2019s about presence, and it\u2019s about realizing that we\u2019re so much more than our vessels. We\u2019re these beautiful lights. I always talk about the light inside my chest. I\u2019m not FKA Twigs. I\u2019m not even Tahliah. I\u2019m a tiny light inside my chest, which is filled with endless love and possibilities. I want to connect with other people as well. It\u2019s about realizing we\u2019re so much more than the pressure, so much more than our ideas of who we think we are. I\u2019m not the first person to have this idea. It\u2019s just maybe the first time I believed it.<\/p>\n \n\tEusexua was shortlisted for Mercury Prize and earned you a Grammy nomination. How do you feel about the reaction? \n\tSometimes I just learn from my younger self. There\u2019s a song that I wrote called \u201cFigure 8,\u201d and it says, \u201cCan you touch it? Is it real?\u201d Sometimes the reaction you get to things, it doesn\u2019t really matter because you can\u2019t touch it. All you can go off is the intention that you had when you made it and the joy that it gives you in performing it or sharing it.<\/p>\n \n\tIt has been hard to categorize you throughout your career. Do you feel like now people have started to understand your artistry? \n\tWhen you\u2019re performing, you have to get your sea legs. And I did when I was younger, when I was the house singer at [London cabaret] the Box, which was raucous. I had people throwing drinks at me and screaming, and everyone is naked and running around. But I feel like it really made me very tough onstage. I actually love it when things go wrong onstage because I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, how can I overcome this?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhen did you know that you wanted to be a performer? You started incredibly young. \n\tYou danced in music videos for different artists, including Kylie Minogue. What do you remember about that time? \n\tI\u2019d literally be in tube toilets, going into public bathrooms, for my next act. I was always felt slightly frustrated. But in the end, I carved out something quite special for myself, and I got to work with incredible directors very early on in my career, like Romain Gavras and Daniel Wolf. Romain Gavras cast me in this adidas advert, and Little Simz was in it as well. It was a few thousand pounds, and it was like a lifeline. I remember doing this dance audition and praying, \u201cPlease, God, if you give me this adidas advert, I\u2019ll just be the best person ever. I\u2019ll be so kind and generous and sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDo you have other favorite music videos or on-set experiences during that time? \n\tHow did your songwriting evolve, particularly in how vulnerable it has been? On Magdalene, you talk about surgery and physical pain and things that are really raw. \n\tI found it very difficult because my family is from very working-class Birmingham, but then my mum really encouraged me with my education and pushed me to get into a private school in the Midlands in England. She would literally make me do practice tests every single day. I got into this really good private school, but I got in on a scholarship. And all the other kids, they had so much money. They were so privileged. We lived in a tiny flat, and my mum was on benefits, and we just didn\u2019t really have anything.<\/p>\n \n\tI had this good education, and a lot of the emphasis was on talking properly and using your words and writing well. They instilled a lot of confidence in the students, which was amazing, but ultimately, for me, it wasn\u2019t real because I wasn\u2019t white and I wasn\u2019t middle or upper class. When I moved to London, it was confusing for me because then I\u2019m a brown girl who\u2019s working class, who speaks well, who\u2019s had this amazing education, but now I\u2019m at Croydon College. I would never want to say to my friends at Croydon College, \u201cOh, actually I got a scholarship to go to a private school in the country.\u201d I\u2019d never want to say, \u201cI don\u2019t know my dad.\u201d I\u2019d never want to say, \u201cWe can\u2019t afford food this week.\u201d My teens and my twenties were just very guarded with information in terms of me trying to fit in anywhere and then fitting in nowhere. So, by the time I got into my early twenties, and I started to discover alternative scenes, queer scenes.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotograph by SACHA LECCA<\/p>\n \n\tSpaces where you could be yourself. \n\tIt really changed my songwriting. I was like, \u201cOh, I can write about complicated sexual dynamics, or I can write about finding my sensuality in my early twenties on LP1, [the song] \u201cKicks\u201d at 23, writing about masturbation or something. It became this thing of \u201cWhat can I tell the truth about?\u201d So, when it comes to Magdalene, I had fibroids, and I\u2019d gone through this incredible amount of pain and operations and dealing with it. I was just like, \u201cYeah, apples, cherries, pain, that\u2019s where I\u2019m at.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs you\u2019ve become more public, has that relationship to vulnerability changed at all? Do you ever find yourself not wanting to share things? \n\tThat situation inspired you to take the reins and run your own career. What has that meant for you? \n\tIt\u2019s been amazing closing that gap. My stepdad has been amazing, because he worked in finance and he\u2019s explaining things and checking up and getting involved. With my boyfriend, as well. My partner has helped me feel really safe and understand things. I\u2019m still learning. I have no idea what I\u2019m doing. In my heart, I\u2019m still that seven-year-old onstage, creating giant mushrooms in my head and skipping around in imaginary huge grass fields, but now the stakes are so high.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always been curious about the type of artist that I am, because I\u2019m always discovering that. In the beginning, I thought maybe I was a visual artist or a performance artist. It\u2019s been interesting for me, trying to fit my music into a traditional album release structure. It\u2019s something that I\u2019ve always struggled with. After all of my projects, there has always been this burst of creativity afterwards.<\/p>\n
I have two sides of my personality. One side is I\u2019m an absolute purist and very serious, and I take my craft very seriously and I like to practice. If I discover something, I want to pay homage to the roots of where it came, and I have to study and go deep into the very seed of the art. For me, that\u2019s Eusexua. I\u2019ve always said it\u2019s not exactly a dance album. It\u2019s a love letter to the way that dance music makes me feel and is influenced heavily by dance music. It kind of has this crystal quality, and everything\u2019s very HD, and everything feels very, for me, present. <\/p>\n
Because life can be so hard, and it can be so stressful. There\u2019s so much tension all the time. I really feel for young people growing up online and all of the pressures that holds. If someone said, \u201c10 million pounds to go back to being 16!\u201d I\u2019d be like, \u201cAbsolutely not.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been confusing at times. I don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s because Eusexua was maybe more popular than some of my other albums. At times, I saw stuff online, and I\u2019d be like, \u201cWhat? People don\u2019t like it?\u201d And I think some of my fans, they can be hard on me, which I get. It\u2019s just part of the job that I have. But then it has been confusing because sometimes I\u2019ve thought like, \u201cOh, maybe people don\u2019t like it,\u201d and then I\u2019ll go and play a festival with 80,000 people, and they\u2019re all screaming the words back at me.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a difficult question, because I\u2019m the center of it, so I can\u2019t see it. I\u2019ve always said I want to do every single step. I feel for artists that have a huge hit, and all of a sudden they have to go and perform in front of huge crowds, and they don\u2019t have their sea legs yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never really spoken about this, but I can\u2019t explain it. All the kids would do a dance competition, but in my imagination, I wasn\u2019t doing a dance competition. I did a character dance where I was Thumbelina. When I was onstage, I thought I was Thumbelina. In my mind, there were giant mushrooms and huge butterflies. If I was doing a dance step, it wouldn\u2019t be like, \u201cOh, you\u2019re doing a step-ball-change there.\u201d It would be like, \u201cYou\u2019re going there because the grass is huge, and you need to push through it.\u201d It was this quite magical moment where I got to create a world. [Starts to tear up.] It makes me emotional because I just want to be there all the time. That\u2019s what I want to do with my music: to create a world that people can dive into. That\u2019s all I ever want.<\/p>\n
I kind of loved it and I hated it, but I learned a lot, and it kind of got me set ready. Any dancer can relate, just the constant audition and casting circuit. One day, it will be, I don\u2019t know, like \u201cLooking for four sexy girls that do Bollywood dancing,\u201d and you\u2019re like, \u201cMaybe.\u201d And the next day, it will be, \u201cLooking for classically trained dancers of this age,\u201d and you\u2019re like, \u201cOkay, yeah, I guess I\u2019ll try and do that.\u201d As a dancer, was always trying to fit into something that was almost it. Because I was mixed race, I was assimilating into something that wasn\u2019t 100 percent what I was, but almost.<\/p>\n
Kylie [Minogue] was fab. She didn\u2019t come to a lot of the rehearsals, and then she turned up the day before, so sweet, so present, such a little cutie. Just came in, and she was like, \u201cOK, where have I got to stand? What\u2019s the move?\u201d She\u2019s like, \u201cOK, got it.\u201d I was like, \u201cWe\u2019ve been rehearsing for a week, and I barely have it.\u201d And then we went and we did a run of it, and she did every single step perfect. Years later, I saw her at a party. I was like, \u201cOh, I was your back-end dancer.\u201d She was like, \u201cOh, I know. I\u2019m so proud.\u201d<\/p>\n
I just love telling the truth. I just have to tell the truth. When I was in my teens, I really struggled with who I was and where I was from and where I was brought up. I grew up in a very white area, and my upbringing was very, very confusing for me, just being a mixed-race person. I didn\u2019t know my biological dad until I was older, but I had a stepdad who raised me, who was Black. Everything, it made sense, but it didn\u2019t quite make sense.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
Oh, my God, what a relief for me, where you meet other people that have had a similar upbringing, or look more similar to you, or think the same as you. And then, randomly, when I was about 23, I was riding with this cabbie. I was like, \u201cOh, what are you doing now?\u201d He was like, \u201cI\u2019m going to a life-coaching seminar.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cWhat\u2019s a life-coaching seminar?\u201d He\u2019s like, \u201cWhen someone talks to you about how to live your life and how to make your life better.\u201d I was like, \u201cOK, I\u2019ll go. Why not? I\u2019m not doing anything.\u201d It was incredible. This guy was talking, and he said, \u201cVulnerability is sexy.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m coming back around to it, but in some ways, yeah, because there are a lot of things that happened during Eusexua. I had an insane touring disaster, and it was hard because I think my fans thought that one thing was going on, but it was the opposite. With Eusexua, I experienced people thinking they know everything about me, but they don\u2019t. I made a decision at a certain point where I was like, \u201cDo you know what? It\u2019s actually no one\u2019s business, and I\u2019m just going to have to deal with this and put on my big-girl pants and suck it up and make this better.\u201d I did, and I was so proud of the way that I was able to handle that situation and come back from the brink of destruction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If I had any advice to any artist, it would be to understand all of that stuff yourself from the beginning. Especially as a young woman of color. When I started out, there\u2019s this idea that, like, \u201cClick your heels and do the thing and make everyone clap. Get a little slap on the ass as you go onstage.\u201d You\u2019re just there doing this dance routine and not actually understanding that you have a monster, amazing business, that the world is your oyster, and what you can create yourself is limitless. And everyone\u2019s just making so much money off you.<\/p>\n