FKA Twigs Eusexua updated album

In a series called Mondo Bullshittio, let’s talk about some of the most glaring hypocrisies and faux pas in pop culture…and all that it affects (and reflects).

In what feels like yet another harbinger (especially in pop culture) of “effortless erasure,” FKA Twigs has done something that’s possibly more “shocking” than releasing two albums in one year: she’s majorly tinkered with the tracklist of the first record she released in 2025, Eusexua. However, after “birthing” Eusexua Afterglow into the world, Twigs apparently got into some kind of additional “fuck it”/“why not?” mood with regard to altering the songs as they once appeared on the original version of Eusexua.

To be fair/as a “consolation,” Twigs didn’t entirely “disappear” the original tracks (“Girl Feels Good,” “Perfect Stranger,” “Childlike Things” featuring, of all people, North West, “Striptease” and “Wanderlust”) that have now been substituted with “Perfectly,” “The Dare,” “Got to Feel,” a version of “Striptease” featuring Eartheater and “Lonely But Exciting Road.” Instead, she’s now made two versions of Eusexua available—one with its original album artwork (since it is, in fact, the original) and one with album artwork that more stylistically mirrors Afterglow in terms of the visuals and further aligning them as “sister” albums (à la Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore).

While some would, of course, defend Twigs’ right to alter her own work however she sees fit, her decision to tinker with the album in this way is representative of a larger trend in modern culture that seems obsessed with, for lack of another cliché, having one’s cake and eating it too. And, in another sense, throwing some shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Or, in other words, what people will tolerate. Take, for example, Beyoncé’s infamous removal of two key elements from 2022’s Renaissance: 1) the sample of Kelis’ “Milkshake” from “Energy” and 2) “spazzin’” and “spaz” from “Heated.”

These erasures were a direct response to the backlash she received from Kelis herself and the disabled community, respectively (the latter’s reaction being something Beyoncé ought to have anticipated considering that Lizzo received similar commentary after releasing her single, “Grrrls,” a month before Renaissance came out). And rather than sticking with the artistic choices she made (and had obviously already put a lot of thought into), Bey capitulated to the pressure, marking one of the most glaring examples of how culture has become increasingly appeasing—so afraid to offend or say the wrong thing because artists would rather receive unanimous praise for their work rather than risk the loss of cash that now comes with the slightest sign of being “cancelled.”

In Twigs’ case, though, making such “adjustments” was hardly necessary. Hardly a response to any public outcry. So why alter Eusexua in this manner? One that is perhaps even more baffling than just “doing away with” the original tracks altogether. Granted, it would be impossible to not take the “cash grab” stance into consideration, the so-called strategy that has many musicians releasing as many versions of their albums as possible so that fans and casual listeners alike will feel compelled to “catch them all.” At the same time, there isn’t exactly a big push for peddling Twigs’ physical release of this updated Eusexua album, so that theory doesn’t track as well as it does for Taylor Swift’s usual “multiple versions” gambit (and in that instance, it’s usually more related to the cover art than it is to the tracklist itself—though, as mentioned, the new version of Eusexua has different cover art, too).

All of this begs the question of why Twigs couldn’t have just included these new additions on Afterglow, a companion album that would have presented the ideal opportunity to do so. After all, it isn’t as if “Perfectly,” “The Dare,” “Got to Feel” and “Lonely But Exciting Road” are any more at home on Eusexua than they could have been on Afterglow. In fact, having experienced Eusexua in its original form, the effect of hearing it in this new incarnation is almost jarring, with especial regard to the loss of “Eusexua” going into “Girl Feels Good,” a truly perfect match together. And for those positing it’s a matter of adhering to each album’s “symmetry”—eleven tracks on Eusexua and eleven on Afterglow—it doesn’t quite hold water considering there’s also a twelve-track deluxe edition of the album called Eusexua (The Eleven), which offers “an exclusive, never-before-heard bonus voice memo of FKA Twigs personally detailing The Eleven practices of Eusexua.”

Whatever Twigs’ “true” reasons for this tracklist “upgrade” (or what Pitchfork billed as “not quite a deluxe album, or a remix album, but a sort of reimagined shadow version of the original record”), the result is a bit, let’s say, chaotic. And regardless of whether it was done for commercial or creative purposes, it might seem like “no big deal” to most listeners who are more open to this “wonderful” idea of albums and their universes never really being finished and instead constantly expanding (like what Charli XCX did with Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat). But maybe what hits so hard about Eusexua’s blindsiding “revamp” is that it reinforces the already well-known realization that nothing is permanent or promised—a phenomenon that has now bled irrevocably into every facet of pop culture.