FKA twigs says new album Magdalene is about 'every lover I've ever had, and every lover that I'm going to have'

Artist said new material has ‘an absolute defiance and strength in a way that my work’s never had before’

FKA twigs has revealed her forthcoming album Magdalene is about “every lover” she’s ever had and will have.

Magdalene, which Twigs has been producing with Nicolas Jaar for the past three years, will be released via Young Turks in the coming months.

“The record is about every lover that I’ve ever had, and every lover that I’m going to have,” Twigs told i-D in a new interview.

Magdalene was made in London, New York and Los Angeles, where Twigs developed a tendency of “wearing long medieval dresses and wandering around by herself”, according to the magazine.

“I was in a sad place, mentally,” Twigs said, “and I didn’t want to come out of it. I don’t have many friends there, and wasn’t communicating with my friends or family here. I just went and locked myself off.”

Musically, Twigs describes the album thus: “Just when you think it’s really fragile and about to fall apart, there’s an absolute defiance and strength in a way that my work’s never had before.”

She added: “It’s really fragile. I made it at a time when I was in recovery – physically and emotionally – and I think that comes through.”

In 2017, the singer-songwriter had six fibroid tumours removed from her uterus. In an Instagram post last year, she said they were “the size of two cooking apples, three kiwis and a couple of strawberries. A fruit bowl of pain every day. The nurse said that the weight and size was like being six months pregnant”.

She continued: “I tried to be brave but it was excruciating at times and to be honest I started to doubt if my body would ever feel the same again. I had surgery in December and I was so scared. Despite lots of love from friends and family I felt really alone and my confidence as a woman was knocked.”

Speaking about her inspiration for the new album’s name, Twigs told i-D: “I used to laugh to myself about how, as a woman, your story is often attached to the narrative of a man. No matter what you’re doing or how great your work is, sometimes it’s as though you have to be attached to a man to be validated. I’d felt like that at times.

“And then I started to read about Mary Magdalene and how amazing she was; how she was likely to have been Jesus’s best friend, his confidante. She was a herbalist and a healer, but, you know, her story is written out of the bible and she was ‘a prostitute’. I found a lot of power in the story of Mary Magdalene; a lot of dignity, a lot of grace, a lot of inspiration.”

Earlier this year, Twigs released “Cellophane”, the first single from the album Magdalene, which is due for release later this year.