FKA Twigs has explained why she asked North West to feature on her recent track ‘Childlike Things’, saying her “energy is inspiring”.
The musician released her critically acclaimed third studio album ‘EUSEXUA’ in January and it included ‘Childlike Things’ in its tracklist, a collaboration with the 11-year-old daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
North delivers a verse in Japanese on the track, and now Twigs has spoken about the decision to collaborate with her in a video posted on Instagram.
“I was working on ‘EUSEXUA’, I was working on my album, and then I was in the studio one day with Lewis [Roberts, aka Koreless] and my friends, and they start playing this bassline, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I just heard a song,” she said. “It just came into my head.”
FKA twigs explains why she asked North West to feature on her album, ‘EUSEXUA.’ pic.twitter.com/Ds2viE43x6
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She then says that in that moment, while she was on the mic in the studio, the words of the song’s opening verse came tripping out of her mouth. “They were like, ‘Did you just do that?’ And I was like, no, that’s a song I wrote when I was a kid.”
Twigs went on to explain that she was a fan of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are as a child, which is also referenced in the song’s lyrics, and the song she had written when she was younger was about her dreams of being a star and being “around people that are eccentric and big thinkers”.
As she developed the song, she said, her label requested that it include a feature. “Really, it needs that childlike energy,” she said, agreeing with her label’s assertion. “It needs someone who has that tenacity, who has that strong point of view that you have when you’re 11.”
“Then, I saw an interview with North West,” she continued in the video. “And she was so confident. And I’m thinking, I wasn’t that confident when I was a kid. I was so shy, I was scared of the dark, I was very different to the other kids at my school. It suddenly occurred to me that I would have loved to have a friend like North, who could speak up for themselves.”
She added that she was impressed by North’s maturity in interviews. “I was like, ok, it has to be North, she has to put her point of view on the song. So she came and she wrote about her faith, which I think is really powerful.”
Twigs said the feature is ultimately about a child that has a “strong and unwavering point of view about what she believes in”. She sees it as being in keeping with the themes of ‘EUSEXUA’, including “doubling down on what you believe in”.
“It was perfect, it was so serendipitous,” she said. “And if you think about it, the crazy thing is, I wrote the song when I was 12/13, she wrote the song when she was 11. When I wrote the song, North wasn’t born, and when she wrote the song, I was 36. So we’ve collaborated through time. This is a collaboration that has taken decades to come to fruition.”
“It’s so meta and it’s so beautiful. That’s what I really love about music and about art and about creating, things can take decades and decades and you don’t know the reason why I wrote ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ when I was 13 and I don’t know why it downloaded into my head, but I do believe in omens and I do believe that North helped make this song come to life after so many years. And for that I’m so grateful.”
NME awarded ‘EUSEXUA’ five stars, writing: “Twigs has successfully shown that the connection of music, movement, mind, soul and body can be converted into sound, weaving these elements into a cohesive and transcendent artistic experience. She brings her own assured sense of creativity and spirituality and combines it with her ability to materialise the intangible. As the album’s closing track says, “You’ve one life to live, do it freely”. What better note to leave it on?”
Twigs is currently touring the album around Europe, with a show in London tonight (March 21), and dates in Chicago, Toronto, New York and San Francisco to follow in the coming days and weeks. See the full list of dates with ticket details here.