FKA Twigs
Tahliah Debrett Barnett (born 16 January 1988 in Tewkesbury, England), better known as FKA twigs, is a British musician, singer and dancer. She also regularly writes her own song lyrics. She is often classified as Contemporary R&B, which she herself is rather critical of.
Life and work
Tahliah Barnett grew up in rural Gloucestershire and attended a Catholic school in Tewkesbury's neighbouring village of Cheltenham. Her father is from Jamaica, her mother has Spanish roots.
At 16 she started writing songs, at 17 she went to London to work as a dancer. She can be seen in the videos for Do It Like a Dude (2010) and Price Tag (2011) by Jessie J. In 2011, she danced in a BBC sketch poking fun at Beyoncé Knowles. In August 2012, she graced the cover of fashion magazine i-D.
She got her nickname 'Twigs' because her joints cracked like twigs when she warmed up. Since this name was already used by another artist, she put the abbreviation 'FKA' for 'formerly known as' in front of it.
On December 4, 2012, FKA twigs self-released her first EP, which she called EP1 for short. She released videos for each of the songs on YouTube. On August 1, 2013, the video for her first single Water Me appeared there, which was released in 2014. The second EP called EP2 was released on September 10, 2013.
On 6 August 2013, the Guardian featured FKA twigs as "New Band of the Day". In December 2013, FKA twigs was nominated for the BBC's Sound of 2014. She was named to the "Spotlight on 2014" list by Spotify. Billboard featured her under the title "14 Artists to Watch in 2014". In April 2014, she was featured on the cover of US music magazine The Fader. In July, she was also on the cover of the German Spex.
FKA twigs' first album LP1 was released in August 2014 on Young Turks, the music label of The xx, SBTRKT and Wavves, where EP2 was also released. LP1 was mostly produced by herself. She was supported in the production by Arca, Sampha and Paul Epworth. She was in a relationship with actor Robert Pattinson from September 2014 to autumn 2017, and even got engaged in spring 2015.
In 2018, she danced in a video directed by Spike Jonze. Because shortly before tumors were removed from her uterus in an operation, she had bleeding during the filming.
In October 2019, she graced the cover of Time magazine.
In celebration of the 2020 Grammy Awards, a tribute concert for Prince titled "Let's Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince", which featured FKA twigs. The concert aired on US television on April 21, 2020, the fourth anniversary of Prince's death.
Musical style
In 2013, Paul Lester described her for the Guardian as 'a UK exponent of the brand of ethereal, eerily spacious R&B-sung-by-cutely-breathy females'. In 2014, before the release of her first album, Natalie Brunner spoke of 'broken and twisted R'n'B' for Austrian radio FM4; just days later, Arno Frank located her in 'avant-garde R'n'B' for Die Zeit, 'deliberately disturbing', performed with an 'ethereal soprano'. She herself was critical of the 2019 "R'n'B" classification in an interview, saying that it was mostly based solely on her dark skin colour and was "sloppy journalism".
