Experimental dance-pop artist FKA Twigs won her first Grammy on Sunday, taking home top honors for best dance/electronic album for Eusexua.
The shape-shifting British singer-songwriter previously received a 2020 Grammy nomination for the music video for “Cellophane.” This year, she was up against fellow nominees Fred Again, PinkPantheress, Rüfüs Du Sol, and Skrillex.
“It’s been the most incredible journey,” Twigs said from the stage of the Grammy Premiere Ceremony in downtown Los Angeles. “I know that to a lot of people, I may be new, but I’ve actually been doing this a really long time, so to any artist, don’t give up. Follow your vision, do you, because that’s what’s gonna make the world fall in love with your art.”
Eusexua was the fourth Twigs album to reach No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Dance Albums chart. Five songs from the critically acclaimed album landed on the Hot Dance/Pop Songs chart, including “Childlike Things” and “Striptease.”
Speaking backstage, Twigs called the win an “out of body experience.” She said making techno music was new for her, a foray into trial and error.
“This creative process started with writing lyrics in the toilets of underground raves in Prague,” she explained. “I feel like I was able to bring that experience into an album, and to my fans, and maybe people that hadn’t experienced rave and club culture before.”
The artist, 28, said she wanted to make music that sparks a feeling of togetherness and “mass healing” in “a more traditional sense,” not just through a 15-second snippet on a phone. She called her path “meandering and the long way around,” but she focused on the human experience of feeling “safe and beautiful and raw.”
“You know, enjoying a techno or a dance song that’s 10 minutes long and doesn’t give you any release or any drop, you know, until seven minutes in. It’s gratifying to wait, and it’s gratifying to enjoy music in the places it’s intended to be,” she said. “If I want to listen to jazz, I want to go to a deep hidden jazz bar with live musicians. If I want to listen to Salsa, I wanna go to a Salsa club … And if I want to experience dance music, I want to go to the rave. You know, so I just would encourage people to get out and do that.”
