FKA twigs’ “Eusexua” and the Search for New Feeling

“Eusexua is a practice. Eusexua is a state of being. Eusexua is the pinnacle of human experience.”

In the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud theorized that sexuality is the collection of processes by which one derives all pleasure. All acts of fruition and fulfillment, whether they be romantic, social, emotional, or even creative, are sexual acts according to Freud. In psychoanalysis, sexuality is the origin from which all human nature is derived. Sexuality is our “life energy,” yet Freud, the father of modern psychology, left without ever offering a clear definition of it. And in his absence, we were eager to dilute what was altogether too complex and uncomfortable into convenient little parables about birds and bees. 

Sex is easy, but sexuality is a lifelong endeavor. 

One hundred years later, at a rave in Prague, FKA twigs delivered a new framework for that opaque Freudian concept, scrawling it across the backside of her palm to the gospel of neon light and techno bass.  

EUSEXUA. 

A portmanteau of “sexuality” and “euphoria,” eusexua, as defined by twigs, is a succint harmony of the mind and body so intense that not even the rational mind can intervene. In an interview with Vogue, twigs elaborated on the concept saying, “It’s like when you’ve been kissing a lover for hours and turn into an amoeba with that person. You’re not human anymore, you’re just a feeling. ... For me, it’s also the moment before I get a really good idea of pure clarity. When everything moves out the way, everything in your mind is completely blank and your mind is elevated. That’s eusexua and that is the only place I want to be now.” 

“Eusexua” was released on September 13th accompanied by a music video. The video opens in a gray and sterile office and abstracts into a kaleidescope of sharp choreography and eldritch imagery. We see twigs singing in skies of earth, in black voids, in celestial clouds, in a dark lagoon, dancers flanking her throughout like a Greek chorus. Their primal precision and physicality promotes something familiar.

Freud called it pleasure; twigs calls it eusexua. “And if they ask you / say you feel it,” twigs advises through the pulsing synth and techno bass, “But don’t call it love / Eusexua.” 

As an artist, twigs has always been an archaeologist of her own emotion. On her 2019 album, Magdalene, twigs dug through her relationship with Robert Pattinson. She excavated her heartbreak, unearthing scars and insecurities, and in doing so, created some of the most riveting and beautiful art to come from the past decade. But where Magdalene came as an armistice, EUSEXUA comes as a manifesto, a constitution for a new way of being. No longer looking to the past, twigs looks ahead. “It’s deep but not sad,” twigs concluded in a fan Discord. “I’m not sad anymore.”

The “Eusexua” music video ends on a black screen. The text beneath the insignia reads, “Eusexua is a practice. Eusexua is a state of being. Eusexua is the pinnacle of human experience.” It has become the mantra of the album.

EUSEXUA is set to release in January of 2025, marking it as twigs’ third studio album. If the lead single is any indication, it will be the flagship on an odyssey of feeling.