FKA twigs

Tahliah Debrett Barnett (born 17 January 1988), known professionally as FKA Twigs (stylised as FKA twigs), is an English singer, songwriter, record producer, actress, and dancer. She was a backup dancer for numerous musicians, and made her musical debut with EP1 (2012), following a year later with EP2 (2013). Barnett's debut studio album, LP1 (2014), reached number 16 on the UK Albums Chart and number 30 on the US Billboard 200, and received a nomination for that year's Mercury Prize. She then released her third EP, M3LL155X (2015).

Barnett took a four-year hiatus before releasing her second studio album, Magdalene (2019). After signing with Atlantic Records, she released her debut mixtape, Caprisongs (2022). Her third and fourth studio albums, Eusexua and Eusexua Afterglow, were released in 2025, with the former receiving the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album. Her work has garnered critical acclaim and has been described as "genre-bending", drawing on various genres including electronic music, trip hop, R&B, hyperpop, and the avant-garde.

Early life and education

Tahliah Debrett Barnett was born on 17 January 1988 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the only child of an English mother who was a dancer and gymnast and a Jamaican father who was a musician. She has Spanish ancestry from her mother's side of the family. She was raised by her mother and stepfather, whom she described as a "jazz fanatic of Bajan descent", and did not meet her biological father until she was 18. Barnett grew up in Cheltenham, a spa town she described as being "kind of in the middle of nowhere". She attended St Edward's School, a private co-educational Catholic school. Her education at the school was funded by a scholarship award. From a young age, she undertook opera and ballet lessons and took part in several St Edward's School productions.

At age 16, Barnett started making music in youth clubs. At age 17, she moved to South London to pursue a career as a dancer, and enrolled at the BRIT School. At age 18, she began working with local record producers to try to find her own musical sound. Around this time, she wrote the song "I'm Your Doll" and ended up producing a lot of what she considers to be "really bad demos". After changing her focus from dance to music, she transferred to Croydon College to pursue an education in fine arts. She worked as a backup dancer in music videos by artists such as Kylie Minogue, Plan B, Ed Sheeran, Taio Cruz, Dionne Bromfield, Jessie J, and Wretch 32. She was a backup dancer for Jessie J in her 2010 video for "Do It like a Dude", and appeared again in her 2011 video for "Price Tag". For a time, she worked as a hostess in a strip club and sang periodically at the Box Soho in Soho, City of Westminster.

Career

2012–2013: Career beginnings

In 2012, Barnett was photographed for the cover of i-D magazine. She became known as Twigs for the way her joints crack. She added the letters FKA to her name when another act called the Twigs – twin sisters active and recording since 1994 – asked her to change her stage name. It was believed or assumed that the "FKA" stood for the business abbreviation "formerly known as", but Barnett has said in multiple interviews that the letters do not stand for anything in particular: "[I]t's just a collection of letters. I was gonna be like FK1 Twigs ... or AFK Twigs ... I just wanted a selection of letters that sounded quite kind of masculine and strong. FKA just worked. It doesn't stand for anything, it's just capital letters."