FKA twigs has released a self-directed video to accompany her new EP M3LL155X, and the result is wonderfully troubling: the four-part video accompaniment to her five-song EP delivers an explicit and uncompromising visual accompaniment to the work’s examination of identity, sexuality, and the male gaze. At turns empowering, disturbing, inviting, and accusing, the film alternates between inviting its viewers in and closing them off, rendering us both complicit in and in opposition to the act of viewing itself. Which is basically a long way of saying this is a successfully troubling video about why and how we watch things, and it’s incredible.
And then we have the music itself, which is receiving reviews ranging from being pretty positive to straight up worshipful. Pitchfork, The Independent, DIY Magazine, Spin… the list of adulatory reviews just goes on and on. But above all, the best commentary on her work comes from the artist herself: in an interview with Complex, FKA twigs goes track by track, explaining the material that she is examining lyrically, musically, and visually in the release. In reference to the second song on the EP (and video), twigs says:
“I’m your Doll” is a song I wrote when I was 18 years old. About a year or two ago, it came up on shuffle, and I was like, “What is this?”….What struck me most was the content of the song. I was just singing, “Love me rough/I’m your doll/Dress me up/I’m your doll,” but it wasn’t with a certain irony that I would now understand as a 27-year-old woman. It scared me a lot, because by then, I’d probably had one boyfriend, and I was probably very sexually inexperienced. I didn’t understand who I was, or what I liked. I realized that I’d been brainwashed and preconditioned to write a pop song and write it from that point of view. I found it almost horrifying that I’d even written it, because it’s so the opposite of who I am now as an artist. It’s completely submissive in a way that I don’t even understand or connect myself to anymore.
I slowed down the song, and it’s almost like a horror for me. I’M YOUR DOLL. It’s the way things could have been. It’s an aspect of my femininity that I don’t feel in touch with anymore, because I would never say that to a man now. I would never portray that to anyone now. It’s really interesting to go back, and say it, and live it with “I’m Your Doll,” because I’m not anyone’s doll.
Read the full artist commentary via Complex, and watch the visual EP for yourself below.
https://youtu.be/bYU3j-22360&w=580
