MAGDALENE, Power, and FKA Twigs
(or: the visceral textures of power and faith)
In the parable of Mary Magdalene, a holy conversion takes over the account of a complicated woman, resulting in the ultimate figure of womanly virtue and faithful sanctification. Once plagued by seven demons, Magdalene infamously converted from lost heretic to repentant saint, following her savior to his brutal crucifixion in devout faith.
Although Magdalene is mentioned more than most apostles in the Bible, she has ultimately become a canonical figure of projection—her biblical presence is elusive considering her singular impact on the gospel, likely due to decades of patriarchal power structures that has left her legacy largely speculative. This is where FKA twigs begins—somewhere between truth, devotion, power and inevitability.
Smithsonian speculates that Magdalene’s many interpretations give narrative to “how the past is remembered, how sexual desire is domesticated, how men and women negotiate their separate impulses; how power inevitably seeks sanctification, how tradition becomes authoritative…and how sweet devotion can be made to serve violent domination.”
Twigs, coming from a Catholic education, found inspiration in the strength and structure of Magdalene’s legacy. In an interview for NPR, she states: “Connecting with Mary Magdalene over the past couple of years, spiritually, I started to explore the concept of the virgin-whore, which is the idea that, as a woman, you can be pure, and you can be innocent, and you can be like a fresh flower — but at the same time, you can be dangerous, and seductive, and all-knowing and healing. It's been incredibly exciting for me to know that that's okay and it exists and I am as much sacred as I am sensual… that's the whole point: You don't have to choose. But I am both, and that is stunning.”
Each song on MAGDALENE works as a narrative vignette with its own inner tensions and theories. In the context of the album, the progression of each track lures the listener towards a seething sea of disparities—power imbalance, sexist media, blind faith and the search for power in vulnerability. FKA twigs gives voice to this divergence in ambitious productions and morphological genres, all held together by her flittering, operatic vocals that still stand alone as a singular art separate from any propelling thesis—which, of course, is also at work.
Gentle piano flurries play off assaulting vocal fragments in the first half of “sad day,” a shapeshifting standout that builds and breaks over and over again as twigs’ vocals begin interacting with various textures and sounds. The track originates with twigs’ gentle vibrato, dancing on delicate lines like “Taste the fruit of me / Make love to all you see,” an anxious beckoning for a lover to stay. Twigs’ pleas beckon into the void, and it speaks back.
There’s a gentle sense of dread that builds with each introspective admission, and the production is far from ignorant. Unlike most other songs of heartbreak, twigs doesn’t just narrate the looming death of a relationship, but gives shape and sound to the inevitable. The flowery lilt of twigs’ early pleas slowly transform, in spliced shrieks, to an industrial finale evocative of Cashmere Cat demolishing an opera house with sheer synths.
Vulnerable lyricism and delicate vocals are infected with a mounting percussive intensity. Haunting operatic wails, whispered rain-slicked admissions, thundering drums hovering between industrial thrashings as she wails “would you make a, make a, make a wish on my love?” By the track’s conclusion, twigs’ somber semblance of self finds its own end.
“holy terrain,” featuring Future, follows the sadness of “sad day” with a search for a partner worthy of devotion. She’s referencing fruits again: “Will you still be there for me, once I'm yours to obtain? / Once my fruits are for taking and you flow through my veins?” Future plays the role of the repentive partner, and as the only feature in the entirety of MAGDALENE, the problematic rapper’s mere inclusion works as its own commentary on atonement.
“I do it like Mary Magdalene / I'm what you desire / Come just a little bit closer till we collide,” she laments on the title track. Twigs finds solace in Magdalene’s direction, misconception, and persecution. She blends power and purity, denouncing that you must choose only one, and finds herself stronger when owning her own vulnerabilities—if she even considers them as such.
If twigs finds authority on “mary magdalene,” she’s snarling on “fallen alien,” defiantly roaring out lines like “By the way you fell I know you / Now you're on your knees / I feel the lightning blast,” and sounds like she’s screaming from within the crackle of a fatal bolt.
“cellophane” is the clear standout and final song of MAGDALENE. Twigs’ voice lifts and falls like last breaths, cresting on the sounds of sunlight peeking through some kind of cloud. Maybe that light is a relationship, and the cloud is the scrutinizing public eye. Twigs’ high-profile relationship with Robert Pattinson is unpacked (no pun intended) through the comparison of stretched cellophane.
And I don't want to have to share our love
I try, but I get overwhelmed
All wrapped in cellophane, the feelings that we had
The cinematic video for “cellophane” sees Twigs elegantly pole dancing for an unknown audience. She embodies strength and vulnerability at once, expressing every ripple of emotion through the physicality of her body’s movement, ascension, and eventual destruction as she is consumed by a winged mechanical double and hauntingly pixel-sorted in a fall to some dystopian clay realm with masked figures creeping up from the darkness.
“They’re hating / They’re waiting / And hoping / I’m not enough,” she hums barely above a whisper. The complications and contradictions of her public image and ended relationships mirror the muddied legacy of Mary Magdalene, and although a romantic partner is no longer in the frame, twigs has found strength in herself from the depths.
“I am as much sacred as I am sensual,” twigs states in an NPR interview. From its dramatic crests and vulnerable bows, sometimes within one song and certainly within the entirety of its 9 tracks, MAGDALENE finds much to meditate on. Between sonically innovative production and symbolically substantial songwriting, FKA Twigs has found herself and her work the strongest they’ve ever been.
