FKA Twigs releases long-awaited music to begin the year, after her last album titled “MAGDALENE” back in 2019. Unlike the previous album, “CAPRISONGS” is an indulgent mixtape of the singer’s own experiences over her career, offering a refreshing change as she explores new genres amid the 2020 lockdown.
Twigs’s long journey of suffering has been recorded to the public, like her breakups, one with Robert Pattinson in 2017 and Shia Labeouf in 2019, who “relentlessly abused” her, gruesome details described in her lawsuit against him. In her 2019 album MAGDALENE, she laments on the imprisonment she felt as the album centers around heartbreak. Twigs is greatly committed to her work, practicing pole dancing to perform a gut-wrenching routine to her song, “cellophane”, an ode to her broken relationships.
Throughout 2020, during one of many lockdowns, Twigs began the production of her mixtape. This time, she steers clear of her distressing past and starts anew. She sings and raps about empowerment, using elements from her journey of self-love to express her growth as a person. Over FaceTime, Twigs collaborates with numerous artists, despite “being isolated…[however] still having the desire to make work.”, she says in an interview. The mixtape is a frenzy of drill rap, dance pop and her signature experimental sound, topped with Twigs’s ubiquitous presence that ties the mixtape together.
Twigs refers to her zodiac signs, giving each a caricature to describe her personality. From her stubborn Capricorn sun fueling her motivation to create, to her Sagittarius moon as the “enigmatic temptress” that bewitches people with her beauty, and her Pisces Venus that centers around relationships and toxic boys. They come alive in the tracks, from the catchy chorus in “oh my love” describing noncommittal relationships, to the oxymoronic “tears in the club”, where Twigs and The Weeknd wail out their anxieties through a groovy dance beat, and “darjeeling”, a drill rap between Twigs and Unknown T. Paired with Jorja Smith’s velvety voice, the track paints an image of London, the city they grew up in. Her rebirth is portrayed through the song “meta angel”. The music video visually captures the moment Twigs draws a bow and literally shoots her old self, releasing the suffering from her past.
We can say that “CAPRISONGS” is a sequel to the depressing “MAGDALENE” album, and through her lively lyrics to the mixtape’s affirmations in the voice note interludes, it is evident that FKA Twigs has grown, mentally and musically, in her career.