FKA twigs, born Tahliah Barnett, has filed a lawsuit towards the ’90s alt-pop band the Twigs, claiming that the duo has issued quite a few cease-and-desist letters over the trademark related to her stage title. Barnett has requested a jury trial to deal with the rights to make use of and registration of the FKA Twigs trademark. Pitchfork has reached out to representatives for each artists for remark.
In her lawsuit, Barnett claims the dual sisters behind the Twigs, Laura Good and Linda Good, have recognized about her stage title since 2013 and exchanged messages concerning the “probability of confusion between her stage title and their band’s title.” Again then, Barnett carried out beneath the title the Twigs and reportedly provided the duo $15,000 to permit their music tasks to “co-exist” with out resorting to buying the title from the duo. “Laura and Linda declined and careworn that they didn’t consent to this proposed co-existence,” reads the lawsuit. The duo sued Barnett in 2014 and, in response, she formally modified her moniker to FKA twigs shifting ahead — a reputation change that they believed wasn’t completely different sufficient to keep away from mixups.
In Could 2024, the Twigs allegedly tried to “weaponize these barred and unmeritorious trademark claims” by issuing cease-and-desist letters to Barnett “threatening litigation, together with threats to enjoin Barnett’s use of her mark, with the intention to disrupt Barnett’s decade-long, uninterrupted use of the FKA twigs mark for Defendants’ personal achieve,” reads Barnett’s lawsuit. The Twigs allegedly “have threatened to hunt an injunction stopping Barnett from utilizing her stage title, demanded a major seven-figure payout to launch any alleged claims towards Barnett.”
In pushing again on this, Barnett is asking for the rights to make use of and register the FKA twigs trademark, as to be determined in a jury trial. Among the many proof supplied in her lawsuit to justify a case, the Grammy-winning Barnett factors out that the Twigs, who fashioned in 1994, have “merely disappeared” after their correspondence over a decade in the past.
Barnett additionally notes that, when submitting the authorized paperwork, FKA twigs had 3.2 million month-to-month Spotify listeners and over 300 million YouTube views, whereas the Twigs “have 67 subscribers and 19,332 views on YouTube, 705 followers on Instagram, and 25 month-to-month listeners on Spotify” — proof, in her phrases, that “the events function in totally completely different business ecosystems” and couldn’t be confused for each other.
This previous November, FKA twigs launched EUSEXUA Afterglow, a brand new album paired with a reimagined model of her third studio album, EUSEXUA. The unique model of that LP earned Barnett her first-ever Grammy Award as FKA twigs final month. “I do know to lots of people I could also be new, however I’ve really been doing this a very very long time,” she stated throughout her acceptance speech. “To any artist: Don’t hand over, observe your imaginative and prescient, do you, as a result of that’s what’s going to make the world fall in love together with your artwork.”
Examine Eusexua at No. 42 in The 50 Greatest Albums of 2025.
