Pop has a new deity, and its name is algorithm. In today’s streaming landscape, songs are engineered with surgical precision to hit dopamine receptors within fifteen seconds. Choruses are focus-grouped for swipe-happy virality, while artists have been reduced to content machines, churning out “playlist-ready” tracks and confessional vlogs designed to placate data points rather than stir souls. It’s a world where music is measured, not felt – and FKA twigs is here to set it ablaze.
‘Eusexua’, twigs’ latest album, is a sprawling, techno-infused manifesto for bodily autonomy and chaotic creativity. Released at a point when even AI-generated Drake tracks can go platinum, it stands as a defiant reminder that art isn’t forged in boardrooms: it’s messy, it’s human, and, most importantly, it’s dangerous.
The term “eusexua” was coined by twigs to describe a state of euphoric mind-body unity and serves as both the title and thesis statement. This is disruption, a 12-track rejection of streaming-core sanitisation that blends techno, garage, and avant-pop into a soundscape that feels like mainlining raw humanity.
The opening title-track announces its intentions with startling clarity: a racing heartbeat morphing into a techno pulse, with twigs’ ethereal voice floating above like a ghost in the machine. It’s music that demands you move, not just consume. From there, the album launches into ‘Girl Feels Good’, a Madonna-meets-Berghain party popper. Like a mantra for the apocalypse, you can almost hear the recommendation algorithms short-circuiting.
In the sweat-soaked ‘Room of Fools’, euphoric vocals collide with frenetic beats, capturing the chaotic unity of a dancefloor at 4am – that magical hour when strangers become temporary family. It comes directly before ‘Drums of Death’, a glitchy, distorted catharsis that treats pop’s obsession with perfection like a piñata at an anarchist convention. Swerving left and right, there’s no desire to conform; just let raw desire and impulse run free.
Perhaps the album’s most audacious moment comes in ‘Childlike Things’, a bubblegum-pop curveball featuring North West rapping in Japanese. Is it trolling? A masterpiece? Both? twigs doesn’t seem to care – she’s here to play, provoke, and push boundaries until they break. The timing feels prophetic. As AI tools promise to churn out “original” songs in seconds, her insistence on human creativity – flaws and all – rings like a rallying cry. Influenced by Prague’s underground techno scene, she’s chasing the raw, communal energy that can only be authentic.
She’s not alone in this rebellion. Charli xcx’s ‘Brat’ – a hyperpop grenade that just earned five BRIT nominations – similarly mocks pop’s obsession with polish. Its standout track, ‘Girl, so confusing’ (featuring Lorde on the remix), transforms anxiety into a solidarity anthem. But ‘Eusexua’ cuts deep in its own way. It’s not just a critique – it’s a blueprint for resistance. twigs walks a path carved by pop’s greatest rogue pioneers: Kate Bush, who turned ‘Wuthering Heights’ into a four-minute exorcism; Prince, who made weird sound sexy one genre meltdown at a time; and Björk, the queen of “I’ll release an album on apps if I want to” energy. Like these icons, twigs treats pop not as a product but as a portal – a way to explore the messy, glorious contradictions of being alive.
Yet the question remains: can this kind of rebellion survive in a system built to commodify dissent? The cynics might point out that AI learns fast – how far are we from an algorithm trained on ‘Eusexua’ churning out “authentic” rebellion by the gigabyte? But the power of ‘Eusexua’ lies not in its specifics but in its spirit, in the way it reminds us that music can still be a full-body experience, not just audio wallpaper for a workout playlist.
In Prague’s techno underground, twigs found a community still dedicated to music as a transformative experience rather than a digestible service. This influence permeates the album’s DNA, with its emphasis on physical, visceral engagement with sound. A whole wave of like-minded artists are beginning to push back against the algorithmic straightjacket: you can hear it in the deliberate difficulty of Ethel Cain’s latest work, in the genre-defying experiments of Arca, in the way even mainstream pop stars are letting their rough edges show.
2025 should be the year that the visceral feeling of letting instinct take charge pushes pop to new heights. As the structure around us tries to make music a mathematical calculation – put in X, get out Y – ‘Eusexua’ is proof that sometimes the most powerful rebellion is simply refusing even to consider the rules.
FKA twigs’ new album ‘Eusexua’ is out now.
Leave a Reply