ABSTRACT
FKA twigs is an artist who exemplifies a balance of fluidity and consistency, and who can therefore engage the full range of theoretical models available in the literature of popular music signification. From the start, popular music studies provided a home for varied theories of music signification. The synthetic model of music signification described is well-suited to navigating the types of complexities and ambiguities. The discussion that follows focuses on musical affectivity, although occasional remarks on genre and topicality are also important. Many of twigs’s timbral and textual choices are also a factor in creating a feeling of an extended beat and of spatialized or projected musical time. Early approaches to popular music signification, such as those discusse, were broadly influenced by British cultural studies and French structural semiology, and tended to focus on developing typologies and hierarchies of musical codes and associated social codes.
