A Case for Integrity: FKA Twig’s EUSEXUA and Charli XCX’s BRAT

Charli XCX’s 2019 album Charli starts with a repetitive declaration of bravado: “I go hard, I go fast / And I never look back,” “Bump bump in the rave / Go forever and forever.” Charli was in a creative hot streak, coming off her SOPHIE-produced EP Vroom Vroom in 2016, which was followed by her twin mixtapes – the thoughtful, but ultimately trite Number 1 Angel, into the undeniably seminal Pop 2. Her self-titled aimed to be an inflection point for pop music, like Pop 2 but with mainstream appeal and commercial sheen: “It [felt] like we [needed] to step it up and make a bigger statement and do a bigger project.” Charli, in so many ways, sounds bigger, with industrial-grade synthesizers on “Gone,” curation of star power to rival the (self-proclaimed Nazi) Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and 2019-trendy confessional lyrics to boot. Yet, after the scorching ballad to self-destruction “Thoughts,” which marked seven air-tight tracks on the album, a song so bad it feels like a derealization shuffles in, with cornball handclaps, and your ‘relatable’ high school teacher’s favorite artist, Lizzo, chimes in “Heyyyy, listen.” What ensues is a retread of “Track 10,” an experimental Pop 2 fan-favorite, with a lobotomy-pleasing tropical house beat and indelible corniness. It felt like nothing short of sacrilege. “Blame It on Your Love”? No, Charli. I blame it on you.

I prayed I would never experience the same revolt I heard then, but when FKA Twig’s EUSEXUA released this January, I … did. Following “Keep It, Hold It,” a stunning, psalm-like techno experiment, here comes “Childlike Things.” And boy, is that thing childlike. Here’s another lobotomy: “Dun-dun-dun / dun-dun-dun-dun-dun” Twigs coos. Then the beat kicks in. Then this line: “I’ve got supersonic powers that are polyphonic.” (Keep in mind: this is the same multihyphenate who made “Cellophane”). Then the unthinkable happens: a Japanese rap verse from nepo-baby-in-charge North West, who is 11, that is basically equivalent to Ariana Grande’s kanji tattoo which she thought meant “7 rings” but actually translates to “small barbecue grill.” Reading reviews from Pitchfork, offshoot blog Hearing Things, and The New Yorker, I was shocked to find a dearth of criticism for this song, which to me is an abomination at the same level of “Blame It on Your Love.” I was even more shocked to find out that Twigs stood by this song – that this was not a last-minute A&R insertion, like “Blame,” likely was. Criticism for this album has been universally excellent – and while I do think there are some genuinely stunning or even innovative moments, such as the Ray of Light-indebted “Girl Feels Good,” or the glitched-out “Sticky,” a song like “Childlike Things” is a torpedo in the side of a submarine called Integrity. The breach sinks the album.

Twigs described her invented word eusexua as the feeling of when “you’re kissing a stranger, or you’re just about to have an orgasm, or you’re just on the precipice of a brilliant idea.” While sometimes pretentious, outlining an album – or any intentional piece of art – through naming is a powerful practice that gives structure to art, which can have the unfortunate tendency to dissolve into unmeaning absent from the necessary context. A word like eusexua, is appetizingly ridiculous, brash, and campy – but with the release of the album, I was surprised to find that her deployment of this term is with the most buttoned-up self-sincerity to the point where it can feel a bit gross. This is evident in her album announcement, where Twigs wrote the following: “eleven pinnacles are coming to penetrate you, let your incus harness my vibrations.” Oh brother.

But a commitment – and even a sincere approach – to a term like EUSEXUA, can prove fruitful. Charli XCX learned that with her album BRAT, the album that came to define this summer, with its 15 brisk songs that each interrogate the idea of what it means to be a brat. Integrity makes the album. I believe a lot of BRAT’s success is because the album is an essay, each song building upon the other until it becomes the very word it describes. Charli’s approach changed sometime after “Blame It on Your Love” (not to mention, 2022’s sellout-core flop CRASH) transforming herself into a no-bullshit, no gimmicks artiste.

I was surprised to learn that Twigs called BRAT “commercial,” and that she believed that even thought both heavily dance-influenced pop albums borrowed from the same scenes, “’Eusexua’ was born from a crevice of subculture.” A scroll through the credits reveals a handful of ‘commercial’ songwriting associates; a cohort that is noticeably absent from most of BRAT. I was initially excited to hear what Welsh producer Koreless would bring to the EUSEXUA table, whether he would direct the soundscapes of the album in a similarly experimental way as AG Cook on BRAT, but I was disappointed to hear his choral eccentricities diminished. Commercial means placing a song like “Childlike Things” in an 11-track album. Commercial means losing control of your vision. Commercial means desaturation. The supposedly radical vision of EUSEXUA: sweaty bodies, underground raves, sexual liberation, is met with no resistance, slotting into the music industry and Spotify playlisting too easily.

Integrity is essential to a good album. I do not believe in the idea of a “no-skips album.” This is algorithm speak – of music being content we choose rather than art we experience. We should be comfortable with un-comfort when it comes to music, we should let the artist hold us for 40 minutes and then release us back into the world. Art cannot be great with compromise. For compromise is concession, a “fudge you” instead of a “fuck you.” The positive press EUSEXUA has received overlooks the importance of integrity in art, of the album as a sacred form and not simply playlist fodder. An album – especially for an artist like Twigs who has independent creative control, and high caliber albums like Magdalene to follow – should stand for something. You cannot be radical without integrity.