Music

FKA Twigs’ New Album Is Devastating, So Fans Are Resorting To Memes To Cope

"It’s like she’s reaching inside of me and yanking any pain I’ve been harbouring right out for me to feel in its rawest form."

by Jared Richards  13 November 2019
FKA twigs' 'Magdalene' is devastating, so everyone's making memes to process their feelings

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FKA twigs’ second album Magdalene arrived last week, and all the sites who have already published their Best Albums Of The Decade lists must be kicking themselves.

Magdalene is a crystallisation of not just one of the 2010’s most forward-thinking artists, but of the decade’s music itself.

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Mixing glitched-out R&B, icy trap, and all-in emotions, twigs creates a sonic world coloured by pain, resilience and a stunning soprano. Better yet, it’s backed by a conceptual and genuinely essential multi-media framework of video and performance that adds historical resonance to twigs’ personal struggle.

Magdalene is named after one of the Bible’s most divisive figures, and in her music and pole-dancing heavy performances, twigs plays with the Madonna-whore complex to explore the depths of her own emotions — enveloping the listener, bigger than them both.

Then there’s the context too. twigs’ last release pre-Magdalene was stand-alone single ‘Good To Love’ in 2016, a song about pushing past a belief she was undeserving of love.

In the time since, she’s had a well-documented break-up with Robert Pattinson, a relationship that catapulted her to attention she’d never seen — including racist abuse from some of Pattinson’s fans who preferred him with Twilight co-star Kirsten Stewart.

In addition (and arguably much more importantly), she underwent surgery for the removal of fibroids from her uterus — something which led twigs, a trained dancer, to take up pole dancing as a way to rebuild strength, and reclaim her own body as no longer an enemy.

The video for lead single ‘Cellophane’ ties everything together. It sees twigs fall and dance down an endless pole on-stage, receiving cheers and jeers as she continues to perform while her world literally falls apart, all the while singing, “Why didn’t I do it for you?“. If you haven’t seen it, stop everything right now and just watch (and clock the hand holding hers at 3.15 before letting go).

All this is to say, Magdalene hits hard. Really, really hard: and as we’re wont to do, we’ve all collectively decided to make memes about it as a way to cope. There are a few strands to the reactions — a lot focus on the sad pole-dancing energy of it all.

Elsewhere, people are zoning in on how each song relates to R-Patz. As a darling of auteurs and cinephiles alike, the actor is conjuring a lot of feelings for twigs’ fans, who either feel split loyalty or just want to beat him down.

In short, if your week has absolutely ruined/made by Magdalene, you’re not alone: consider each meme the internet’s way of saying they’re “running down the hills/to be with you“.

Smile through the tears: find a collection of our favourites below.