FKA twigs recently returned with MAGDALENE, the follow-up to her 2014 debut album, LP1. In an interview with Beats 1’s Zane Lowe, the English singer opened up about drawing from her recent experience with heartbreak while working on the album and finding her voice outside society’s expectations.
“I’ve always written from a really honest place, but an honest place at 22 or 23 with your life experience is different to an honest place [now],” twigs explained. “I think obviously like showing people your heart when it’s raw, it is vulnerable. It’s one thing showing people your heart when you’re feeling sexy and sassy and you’re 22, 23 running around New York like Miss Thing… But then it’s another thing where I’m like, ‘I’m broken now.’ It felt different, but I didn’t give myself a hard time whenever I was into it.”
twigs said the album’s third track, “sad day,” contains the most emotional part of the album for her, which is the bridge. On it, she reflects on trying to mend a broken relationship:
You’re running
And I tried to make it work before
You’re running
I made you sad before
I, then I
Have you ever made a wish before?
I see you running
I made you sad before
Elsewhere in the interview, she used the word “unmeshing” to describe what it was like to process the 2017 breakup of her engagement to Twilight actor Robert Pattinson.
“When you’re with somebody, your lives become very entwined with like your friends and family and your routine,” she said. “And then the unmeshing is you’re then by yourself and then it’s finding your own morning routine, or your nighttime routine.”
One positive aspect of the breakup was that it freed twigs from all the media attention surrounding her relationship with Pattinson.
“It really had nothing to do with me and I knew that at the time. And I know that now,” she said. “And you know that phrase, ‘Your monkeys, your circus?‘ Like your monkeys, your circus. It kind of felt like that. And I don’t have any monkeys anymore.”
twigs describes the outside forces who seemed against the relationship on the album’s first single, “cellophane,” when she sings:
They wanna see us, wanna see us alone
They wanna see us, wanna see us apart
Most importantly, working on the album empowered twigs to undo the expectations for a woman in a relationship that she learned while growing up. “I’m from a generation, where as a woman, I was taught that your Prince Charming would choose you. And when he did you were grateful, and it was more about like being chosen,” she said. “For me, MAGDALENE is unraveling that and just finding my voice without society’s whispers.”
Finding that voice has allowed twigs to understand herself better than she ever has. “I have a dog and we hang, and I feel like I’ve never known myself better,” she told Lowe. “I’ve never felt younger. I feel like I have like a little child inside me that’s like alive.”
Read all the lyrics to FKA twigs' MAGDALENE on Genius now.
