FKA Twigs' 'LP1': A decade of defying expectations

How one album redefined the boundaries of experimental pop and paved the way for a new generation of boundary-pushing artists, challenging industry norms and expanding the very definition of mainstream music in the decade since its release

Words: Dan Harrison.

True paradigm shifts are rare. Rarer still are the albums that not only shift said paradigms but seem to exist outside of them entirely, creating their own gravitational pull, bending the very fabric of musical space-time around them. FKA Twigs' 'LP1', released a decade ago today (6th August), is one such cosmic anomaly – a debut that arrived not so much fully formed as fully evolved.

To revisit 'LP1' in 2024 is to be reminded of its startling prescience, its unapologetic weirdness, and its profound impact on the musical landscape of the past decade. It's a record that feels at once intimately of its time and strangely out of the temporal flow altogether – a testament to Tahliah Barnett's singular vision and her refusal to be bound by the expectations of what a pop star should be, sound like, or represent.

Ten years ago, the charts were dominated by the likes of Ed Sheeran's 'x' and Sam Smith's 'In the Lonely Hour': big pop records that understood the rules and played them well. But, in the shadows of East London, a former backup dancer was quietly preparing to flip the whole game board, laying the groundwork for a future where the bold and unconventional would inherit the Earth.

'LP1' landed like a UFO in a field of crop circles – strange, otherworldly, and impossible to ignore. From the opening notes of 'Preface', with its ghostly choral harmonies and skittering beats, it was clear that this was not just another R&B album, not just another electronic experiment, not just another anything. This was something entirely new, a blueprint for a pop landscape where the unusual would become the coveted.