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Tag: Jordan Hemingway

  • Sean Baker Meets Grimes in FKA Twigs’ “Cheap Hotel”

    As FKA Twigs prepares us for the Eusexua Afterglow—a.k.a. the title of not her deluxe version of Eusexua, but a “sequel album” to it—she’s given the gift of “Cheap Hotel,” the first single from said record. Co-produced by Twigs, Joy Henson, Manni Dee, Petra Levitt and Lilbubblegum, the sound of the track has all the hallmarks of the early 2010s, particularly in terms of FKA Twigs’ Grimes-esque vocals. We’re talking Visions-era Grimes (in other words, well before Elon destroyed her). Then there is the element of the Spring Breakers Soundtrack to the sound, not just musically, but also with the contribution of warped-sounding male vocals that boast, “Lord on my denim, designer work wear/No pausing with these senses, I’m just tryna splurge here” (and yes, it’s also very 2010s not to mention additional vocals as an official feature [see also: Flo Rida’s “Right Round” [granted, a single from 2009], which didn’t list Kesha as the featured artist at the time when it came out). 

    To capture the trippy, gritty feeling of the track, Twigs once again tapped Jordan Hemingway (who also happens to her boyfriend) to direct the video (indeed, they co-directed and co-wrote it together). And, although the song itself is three minutes and thirty-one seconds, the video is practically a short film length, clocking in at seven minutes and six seconds. Opening with a few shots of the “cheap motel” in question, Hemingway then cuts to a scene of a man walking on the side of the highway as he tries to call Twigs’ phone, leaving a message demanding, “Yo, where you at yo? For real. You got me out here in the middle of nowhere, I don’t know where I’m at… This is gettin’ crazy now, come on, like…” Meanwhile, Twigs and a friend of hers roll up to the Royal Motel, likely the one in oh so glamorous Secaucus, New Jersey (though, admittedly, the aesthetic of the town has some decided “LA vibes”—this being perhaps a testament to how all the U.S. looks like a giant freeway with some strip malls plopped down here and there). 

    As Twigs’ friend talks about how “he wasn’t even that cute,” the viewer can infer she’s alluding to the lost dude attempting to track Twigs down in the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. New Jersey). Clearly trying to continue the party/club they were at in the light of day, Twigs and her friend rock-paper-scissor for who has to go in and buy a room “for the night” (though it’s day) with the presumably kifed wallet containing the necessary credit card to do so. Though Twigs’ friend says before going, “I bet you that motherfucker’s card declined.” Fortunately for Twigs and the many other people she invites into the room, that doesn’t turn out to be the case. And from there, the title card, in all its purplish cursive font glory, establishes “Cheap Hotel” as the name of this “little movie.” One that very much possesses the style of Sean Baker—with the narrative and setting itself being almost like a mash-up of Tangerine and The Florida Project. 

    Once inside the room, it doesn’t take long for a flood of people to show up and keep the party going from the night/morning that has now turned into broad daylight. But Twigs clearly wants to have her own after-after-after-after party as she sings, “Do you wanna bring a friend?/To the cheap hotel right behind the club/In Room 20 or 24/Call me when you’re outside, endless summertime/At the mini bar, bring your credit card/We’ll go all night.” And all day. 

    Bopping along to the music she’s put on in their cheap hotel room (even though the average price at the Royal Motel is about a hundred and fifty dollars a night—so yeah, it’s a “cheap” motel by 2025 standards), Twigs ignores the various missed calls and text messages from “Hot Guy 3″ (as she’s chosen to label him in her contacts). Having way too much fun/generally too blissed out on drugs and alcohol to care, Twigs keeps dancing while various yellow-toned captions, designed to serve as “thought bubbles,” as it were, let the viewer know what each “guest” is saying. For example, “Has anyone seen my vape?” 

    Twigs occasionally checks her phone to listen to the latest message from Hot Guy 3 demanding to know where she is (and also where his “shit” is, for that matter—which plausibly means his wallet). In another instance, Twigs pauses the music to go outside and get a drink from the vending machine, at which time she encounters a very Tangerine-esque character that gets immediately uppity at the sight of her, asking, “The fuck you doin’ in my hood, babe?” Twigs ignores the question, continuing to go about her business before sauntering back into the room (though she does briefly threaten to spray her drink in the antagonizer’s face, prompting the latter to unleash another invective). 

    Back inside the room, which seems even more like another world trapped in the nighttime/some alternate universe now that we’ve seen Twigs go back into the day for a hot minute, she turns her music back on. Then, Hemingway intercuts scenes of her outside with the crew that was antagonizing her with scenes of her inside the room. This before Hot Guy 3 finally does arrive at the place, thinking that maybe he’s at last found the light at the end of the tunnel. But no, not only does everyone inside the room freeze so that they can be extra quiet and make him believe no one’s in there, but when he does open the door, he finds something quite unexpected. And this is where the unforeseen David Lynch-meets-David Cronenberg influence comes in (even though, up until this point, it was all Baker), with Twigs putting someone else’s eyeball on her face just as he enters the room. For it seems as though she’s “absorbed” everyone into her own body, become like a composite of all the revelers. 

    In a sense, this “absorption” vaguely achieves something she had said in one of the captions just before Hot Guy 3 burst in: “I wish I could be every me at once.” Perhaps that’s part of why she’s sought to combine Eusexua with Eusexua Afterglow as “companion pieces,” for they’re inevitably variations on the same theme. And whereas her videos for the Eusexua era all ended with, “Eusexua is a practice, Eusexua is a state of being, Eusexua is the pinnacle of human experience,” the ones for Eusexua Afterglow now just end simply with the question, “Searching for an afterglow?” And whether you were or not, it’s surely been found in “Cheap Hotel.”

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • FKA Twigs’ “Perfect Stranger” Offers Only Pros to Meeting Strangers, While Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger” Is More Cautiously Aroused

    FKA Twigs’ “Perfect Stranger” Offers Only Pros to Meeting Strangers, While Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger” Is More Cautiously Aroused

    Madonna as the titular character in Desperately Seeking Susan once said, “Good going, stranger.” It seemed, in its odd way, to presage a song of hers that would come out fourteen years later: “Beautiful Stranger.” While it was the lead single for a less than elegant movie, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Madonna’s message on the track (which sounded like a holdover from the Ray of Light era, but was actually recorded the same year it was released, 1999) captures a timeless message: love at first sight. Or, at the bare minimum, lust at first sight. The thrill of initial attraction that can only come from not actually knowing someone. From being able to project all of your fantasies and expectations onto them. And yes, this is usually based on looks alone as opposed to “energy radiated.”

    At the time, Madonna’s inspiration for the song was reported to be Andy Bird, a British “regular person” posing as a “filmmaker” (which was a loose way of saying unemployed). Obviously, he was Guy Ritchie 1.0, a set of training wheels before Madonna unearthed a more legitimate Brit in the world of film. Nonetheless, you didn’t see Madonna being inspired enough by Ritchie’s looks to write such a song about him (instead, he got “Push”). Indeed, Bird typified the phrase “tall, dark and handsome” or, even better for Madonna’s songwriting purposes, “tall, dark stranger” (this being a common vague description for fortune tellers to assure, “You will meet a tall, dark stranger” [a cliché that Woody Allen turned into a title for one of his “late era,” particularly bad movies]).

    And yet, despite the attraction she feels for this stranger, Madonna knows that she’ll pay the piper later if she ignores her instincts about him being fundamentally dangerous. For, as it used to be said before the arrival of apps like Uber and Airbnb: “Stranger danger.” What’s more, some of Madonna’s most formative years were at the height of AIDS in the 1980s, when sex with strangers suddenly started to feel more dangerous than ever (regardless of being gay or not). This fear of the risk that came with “casual sex” (the latter practice seeming to reach a crescendo in the late 70s) is also inherent in Madonna’s 1993 video for “Bad Girl,” which riffs on the premise of Richard Brooks’ 1977 movie, Looking For Mr. Goodbar. Itself a cautionary tale of what can happen when one falls down the rabbit hole of meeting beautiful strangers almost every night (especially as a woman). And going home with them.

    With FKA Twigs’ latest single, “Perfect Stranger,” it’s difficult not to recall Madonna’s 1999 song also highlighting the agonies and ecstasies of encountering someone new (for sexual or romantic purposes, needless to say). Except that, in Twigs’ case, there seems to be no drawback whatsoever to a perfect/beautiful stranger. In fact, throughout the song, she riddles off all the ways in which keeping someone at arm’s length skillfully enough to remain a stranger is the hottest thing since latex. So it is that she sings, “You’re perfect, baby/My perfect stranger/You’re beautiful, you’re worth it/You’re the best, and you deserve it/You’re a stranger, so you’re perfect/I love the danger/You’re the perfect stranger.”

    In another instance of ostensible Madonna homage, Twigs ruminates at one point during the outro, “What is this human nature?/No answer, I’m infatuated.” Madonna’s own song, “Human Nature,” also has a video punctuated by Madonna and her backup dancers in “boxes” (just as the “Perfect Stranger” video is characterized by “box rooms”). Not to mention the same S&M aesthetic that Twigs wields during one particular “vignette” from the Jordan Hemingway-directed video.

    In contrast to Twigs’ lustiness in the song, Madonna approaches her stranger (and strangers in general) with much more cautious arousal. Which is why she self-deprecatingly says, “If I’m smart, then I’ll run away/But I’m not, so I guess I’ll stay.” She also notes that one has to have a predilection for the dangerous (as Twigs does) in order to give in fully to an attraction to a perfect/beautiful stranger, singing, “You’re some kind of beautiful stranger/You could be good for me/I have a taste for danger.” If one doesn’t have that taste, however, things could get dicey. From Madonna’s perspective, anyway.

    As far as Twigs is concerned though, “That’s okay with me/To live my life with some mystery/Please don’t say that I must know/And that’s alright, I say/We’re all getting through this our own way/I’d rather know nothing than all the lies/Just give me the person you are tonight.” Madonna, conversely, seems to want her expectations of the perfect/beautiful stranger to eventually pan out in some way once the two get to know one another more fully. Even if more than part of her expects to be disappointed…if the following lyric is anything to go by: “I looked into your eyes/And my world came tumblin’ down/You’re the devil in disguise/That’s why I’m singin’ this song to you.”

    But the reason Twigs is singing her song to her perfect stranger is to emphasize that disappointment can never come if you never truly get to know someone. Thus, the dual definition of “perfect stranger” to mean, on the one hand, simply “a total stranger” and, on the other, someone being “perfect” solely because they are a stranger, and one therefore doesn’t have any awareness of their “defects” yet. It’s also interesting to hear Twigs’ predilection for incorporating the sound of 90s house and dance music into the production, whereas Madonna’s song, actually made in the 90s, is deliberately intended to be more sonically reminiscent of music from the 60s. While this might have been because it was made for the Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me Soundtrack, there’s also another element at play: the idea that meeting a stranger in the 60s—especially the late 60s—was infused with just as much of a sense of danger as it was titillation, what with Cold War paranoia besetting everyone.

    In the here and now, Twigs’ chooses to ignore all the paranoia associated with the present (from catfishing to being scammed in some other egregious way) and play up the sheer romance of encountering a stranger, particularly on the dance floor. The not knowing is what makes it sexy rather than scary (“I don’t wanna have the anxiety/Please don’t say so I won’t know”). And besides that, “What we don’t know will never hurt.” Granted, it didn’t hurt Twigs to “meet” (a.k.a. invite) former stranger Madonna and “powwow” with her at the Central Saint Martins BA fashion graduation show back in 2022. Surely, that meeting of the minds might have helped with the genesis of “Perfect Stranger,” if Twigs happened to brush up on M’s back catalogue afterward. Not that she wasn’t already pole dancing to “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” and incorporating “Vogue” into live versions of “Give Up” well before the fashion show came along.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • FKA Twigs Lets Her Projections Run Wild on “Perfect Stranger”

    FKA Twigs Lets Her Projections Run Wild on “Perfect Stranger”

    The theme of projection in romance seems to be trending at the moment. At least if one takes Dua Lipa’s “Illusion,” Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux and, now, FKA Twigs’ “Perfect Stranger” as signs o’ the times. Granted, “Perfect Stranger,” the latest single from Eusexua (following up the song of the same name) is likely to be far more warmly received than the sequel to Joker, even if both pop culture offerings focus on how projecting an idea of who someone is onto them without really knowing who they are is the key to stoking “romantic feeling.” Because once you find out more, you’re certain to lose the same level of fervor you had when you could envision your “crush” to be exactly who you thought they were/wanted them to be (just ask Lady Gaga’s version of Harley Quinn a.k.a. “Lee Quinzel”).

    Reteaming with director Jordan Hemingway (who also directed “Eusexua”) for the video, Twigs lays out that premise by offering up a series of imagined scenarios with different people in various “box rooms” (which are eventually presented as said “boxes” via the pan out method, sort of like the presentation of the rooms in the “dollhouse” [that turns out to be inside of a snow globe, for added Black Mirror effect] of Taylor Swift’s “Lover” video). In the first room, she’s on her own, sporting what will now forever be known as the “eusexua haircut” when fans look back on this era. It is in this state of aloneness that she can let her projections run wild, and this is conveyed by the camera panning down to reveal the first “fantasy”: Twigs loving up on some similar-looking woman (at least in terms of having a thin frame) as both wear next to nothing. After all, you can’t spell “eusexua” without “sex.”

    At the start of the song, Twigs already announced, “I don’t know the name of the town you’re from [in contrast to Lana Del Rey singing, “I come from a small town, how ‘bout you?” on “Let Me Love You Like A Woman”]/Your star sign or the school you failed/I don’t know and I don’t care.” The reason she doesn’t care, obviously, is because to know anything concrete about a person is to have them demystified. “Debunked,” as it were. And since Eusexua is an album inspired by the grimy, no-holds-barred, no-inhibitions-left dance music that Twigs heard while going to various underground clubs in Prague (while filming The Crow, the only movie more condemned than Joker: Folie à Deux this year), the sound and motif of “Perfect Stranger” caters to one’s sentiments while experiencing a night out in this type of environment.

    Drenched in the sweaty debauchery of the dance floor, it’s no wonder Twigs also insists, “I’d rather know nothing than all the lies/Just give me the person you are tonight.” As mentioned above, this smacks of Dua Lipa’s “Illusion,” during which she sings, “Yeah, I just wanna dance with the illusion.” Being that both British chanteuses favor music tailored to “the clerb” (Charli XCX isn’t the only one), it’s to be expected that some of their lyrical themes would align. And this year, each prefers dancing with their illusions/projections of someone.

    The camera pans sideways next to reveal a version of FKA Twigs cooking in the kitchen (albeit ineptly). Even though this scene doesn’t coincide with the line, “I don’t know the food that’s your favorite now/Your work or what you’re working around/I don’t know and I don’t care/And that’s okay with me/To live my life with some mystery/Please don’t say that I must know.” In point of fact, Twigs’ entire thesis statement on this song is in direct contrast to the overexposed nature of living in the internet-fueled world of today, where no mystery at all is left about what a person is like. Or rather, what the image they want to project is like. Maybe that’s why Twigs goes for a 90s feel with the song’s production (courtesy of Koreless, Stargate, Ojivolta and Twigs herself) in addition to the aesthetic of the video, which could, at times, double as a CK One commercial with all its “slick” panning.

    Twigs then gets more psychological by presenting a twin self in the same room with her, almost as though to subliminally indicate that perhaps by not fully knowing herself, she can keep thriving and surviving. Either that, or she’s determined to promote the notion of sologamy through cloning. But that doesn’t appear to be the case in another “box room scenario” wherein FKA is the mother to a baby, her husband or baby daddy sitting solemnly behind her as he gives her what looks like a really bad massage whilst she rocks the child in her arms (in truth, it looks like something out of a 90s Janet Jackson video). The camera then pans horizontally back over to the first pair of “perfect strangers” we were introduced to (Twigs and the woman who has the same thin frame she does) before panning down to reveal a new “box room” altogether. This one being decidedly S&M-centric.

    Considering Twigs used this particular scene as a teaser for the video, it’s likely among her favorites. And why wouldn’t it be? She gets to wear scanty leather lingerie while walking on a mini treadmill, of sorts (clearly, Charli brought the treadmill back with the “360” video), as her dom gives her a stinging spanking with a riding crop. At which point she pronounces, “I love the danger/You’re the perfect stranger.” Quite the opposite of the millennial mantra, “Stranger = danger.”

    The camera pans down once more to unveil the final “box room” setup: Twigs in an orgiastic, tribal-themed sort of scenario. Writhing in ecstasy amid her final projection, the end of the video shows all of the “box rooms” stacked atop each other and side-by-side (again, it makes for the aforementioned “Lover” dollhouse effect). All of these perfect strangers prompting Twigs to announce, “Oh, we can make it work/What we don’t know will never hurt/‘Cause you’re a stranger, so you’re perfect.” That is, until you get to know said stranger.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • FKA Twigs Reminds: Don’t Ever Fucking Work In An Office…Because You Might Not Experience “Eusexua” Long Enough to Escape It

    FKA Twigs Reminds: Don’t Ever Fucking Work In An Office…Because You Might Not Experience “Eusexua” Long Enough to Escape It

    In the annals of “office music videos,” there are very few. In the recent past, there have been the likes of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” and Fifth Harmony’s “Worth It,” but these played with the idea of “office aesthetics” more than trying to “make a statement” about office work and its soul-crushing nature. And, in its way, that’s what FKA Twigs’ music video for her eponymous first single from Eusexua does. Except that it also incorporates the kind of message that Avicii and Nicky Romero’s 2012 hit, “I Could Be The One,” does in its own music video, where an office worker (played by Inessa Frantowski) endures the daily drudgery of her life—dominated mostly by the banal tasks she’s “required” to do for eight hours a day—until she gets the wake-up call to abandon it entirely (resulting in an ironically tragic denouement).

    In a similar fashion, we see a frantic FKA Twigs running into the generic office where she works at the outset of the Jordan Hemingway-directed “Eusexua.” Clearly, she’s dangerously tardy and doesn’t want to get caught. “You’re late,” the drag queen-esque co-worker who looks like Eartheater tells Twigs as she scurries into the fluorescently-lit space (and maybe it is Eartheater—after all, “Alexandra Drewchin” has a co-songwriting and co-producer credit on the track). Plopping down in her seat and taking off her glasses, Twigs barely has time to get her bearings before the boss man materializes to demand, “Have you got a second?” Reluctantly, Twigs says, “Yeah.” “Have you seen the new comments?” “I…haven’t. Were they on GroupSpace?” “No, TeamZone Chat.” Automatically, Twigs seems to be trolling the ridiculous names that get used in a corporate setting, all under the guise of “improving communication.”

    Frantic to accommodate her boss, Twigs tries to log in on her computer to see what’s what, only to keep getting an error message that makes checking her latest emails impossible. Meanwhile, her boss drones on, “We’re phasing out GroupSpace. Everything’s on TeamZone now.” “I’m really sorry.” “It’s fine. Loads have missed it. That’s why I’m standing here physically right now.” Before she can keep engaging in this banal conversation, the phone on her desk rings. Telling her boss “one second,” she answers it, ostensibly receiving some sort of hypnotic message that leads her into a state of what she calls “eusexua.” This being a term Twigs created to describe the feeling of transcending time, space and your body when you find yourself in a euphoric moment that can turn into hours passing without realizing it (this inspired by her clubbing period in Prague while filming The Crow—disastrous for her acting career, but great for continuing to spur her musical one). Indeed, that definition and the events that take place also recall Avicii’s video for “Levels” (he obviously understood how soul-sucking office [non-]life was, despite enduring the different kind of soul-sucking lifestyle entailed by being a world-famous DJ).

    And, evidently, whoever is calling her wants her to remember what that feeling is after she’s so clearly gone numb as a result of spending most of her time in an office setting (and for a company called “CroneCorp” no less). Her boss initially regards her with a strange look at the sight of her own bizarre expression while she listens to whatever is on the other side of the phone (an alien race seeking to remind humans that they’re wasting their potential on “busy work” for the sake of pay?). But then, he, too, is overtaken by eusexua, along with the rest of the office as they get into formation to perform what is sure to become among Twigs’ most iconic choreography—courtesy of Zoi Tatopoulos, “best known for her extraterrestrial approach to creative direction and movement choreography” (so maybe that alien theory holds weight). The accompanying Janet Jackson-y backbeat does not yet let us hear the actual song. Instead, we’re given a preview of “Drums of Death,” which is to be the fourth track on Eusexua. Thus, as though Twigs is speaking from the “head alien” perspective, we hear her voice command, “Listen, girl, drop your skin to the floor/Let your clothes body talk/Shed your skin/Rip your shirt/Flesh be torn/Feel hot, feel hard, feel heavy/Fuck who you want/Baby girl, do it just for fun.”

    It is after this mantra that everyone in the office really has shed their “skin” (a.k.a. work clothes) in favor of wearing solely their skivvies. The lyrics to “Drums of Death” then continue to play as Twigs asks, “Hello, what you like?/Do you wanna meet later?/Relax and ease your mind ‘cause you work so much/I know what you like, and you’re my main character/I’m here anytime, you can call me up.” And with the shedding of her “work skin,” as it were, Twigs is also the only one to be given what will now be known as her “Eusexua era haircut.” Which means a “semi-2007 Britney,” as only half of her head is shaved (the front part).

    Before Twigs and her fellow (erstwhile) office workers cease their dance, Twigs concludes it with the sound lyrical advice, “Crash the system, diva doll/Serve cunt, serve violence.” It is then that Hemingway focuses the camera on a computer keyboard with someone’s hand repeatedly tapping the same button before then panning downward to reveal the office in topsy-turvy mode, with its ceiling now showing signs of dirt and decay infecting the space—almost like a commentary on how fucking antiquated this type of work setup is. At the same time, it’s also a means of remarking on how humans need to literally get back to the earth. Away from all the trappings of so-called modernity that have turned them into automatons. At the “bottom” of the dirt-caked ceiling, Twigs is suddenly outfitted in a black, extraterrestrial-chic “ensemble” (mainly a pair of tights) just as the setting switches entirely and she’s pulled upward (or downward, depending on how you look at it) into an earthen backdrop—this moment somewhat mirroring her being pulled up into a new surreal setting during her famous “cellophane” video.

    Writhing in sexual unison with the former office workers who have joined her in this “state of being” (eusexua), they, too, look as though they’ve been ejected—birthed—from out of the dirt that was spilling into the office ceiling. And yes, this type of sexual writhing is something Madonna perfected during The Girlie Show via a performance of “Deeper and Deeper” that concludes with plenty of orgiastic flair (she perfected this writhing, once again, during her performance of “Justify My Love” for The Celebration Tour).

    Channeling the lyrics of Olive’s 1996 song, “You’re Not Alone” (during which Ruth-Ann Boyle assures, “You’re not alone, I’ll wait ’til the end of time/Open your mind, surely it’s plain to see/You’re not alone, I’ll wait ’til the end of time for you”), Twigs sings, “You’re not alone (under the stars)/Do you feel alone?/You’re not alone.” A statement that, although seemingly “simple,” still has plenty of importance and meaning to the many people who feel perennially lonely—even more so in this increasingly dehumanized world (and that sort of dehumanization was arguably refined with the advent of the office space).

    By the end of the video, Twigs has somewhat left the height of eusexua long enough to realize she’s still in the office (now back in her “professional” attire) as other co-workers appear to remain in a state of feral bliss. Seeming to remember where she is, Twigs also remembers that she probably shouldn’t stay in this hellhole another second…because she might not get the “eusexua call” again. The one that shook her out of her coma in the first place.

    Genna Rivieccio

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