Into The Music
A decade-old name dispute has officially returned to court. FKA Twigs, the artist born Tahliah Debrett Barnett, filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on March 20th, seeking a declaratory judgment affirming her right to use and register her own stage name. The suit names the American indie duo “The Twigs,” comprised of twin sisters Laura and Linda Good, who hold a trademark on the name dating back to the 1990s.
The two parties first clashed in 2014, when The Twigs filed a trademark infringement claim against Barnett. That case went nowhere after a judge declined to grant a restraining order, and the Good sisters dropped it. Then, for roughly ten years, nothing. FKA Twigs built one of the more singular careers in contemporary music, put out acclaimed records, toured the world, and the name became internationally recognized. Apparently, that success is exactly what prompted the sisters to come back around.
According to court documents, cease-and-desist letters resumed in May 2024, and the demands have escalated since. FKA Twigs legal team says the Good sisters are now threatening a court injunction unless they receive a seven-figure payment. The timing is notably aggressive, arriving just as Barnett is in the middle of her global Body High Tour.
The legal argument from FKA Twigs side is straightforward: over ten years passed with no contact, no objection, and no legal action. During that time, her name took root. Her fans know who she is. There is no realistic risk that anyone is going to confuse a British avant-pop and electronic artist with a lesser-known indie duo. The lawsuit essentially asks the court to say so formally.
The FKA in her name was always a workaround. She adopted it precisely because of the earlier dispute, with FKA standing for formerly known as. She was already accommodating the situation a decade ago. That kind of good faith apparently did not satisfy the Good sisters in the long run.
The case gets at something genuinely complicated about trademark law and artistic names. Trademark protections reward first use and registration, not cultural impact. A band from the 1990s with a registered mark can technically have a legal leg to stand on regardless of whether anyone has ever heard of them. The practical realities of fame and recognition do not necessarily translate into legal protection, which is exactly the kind of asymmetry that makes these disputes so thorny.
What makes the situation more frustrating is the timing of the demand. Sending cease-and-desist letters and threatening injunctions during a major international tour is a pressure tactic, full stop. Whether or not the Good sisters have a legally defensible position, the optics of it are ugly. FKA Twigs is not some newcomer who stumbled into someone else territory. She has been using the name in the public domain for over a decade without incident.
A court date has not yet been set. In the meantime, the Body High Tour continues.
Your name is such an intimate thing , it’s the sound someone makes when they call you, the word that holds your whole artistic identity. I genuinely feel for Tahliah here. A seven-figure demand just to exist under a name she built her whole world around feels like something out of a dark fairy tale. I really hope this resolves in a way that lets her keep being her.
Mia, yes , but a seven-figure demand does complicate the sympathy somewhat, non?
OK so as someone who spent his formative years in a ska band called ‘The Checkerboard Incident’ (yes, we wore the hats, no I am not proud), I feel like I have some authority here , a name is everything when you’re trying to build an identity from scratch. The ‘FKA’ literally means she already gave up one name once before. A seven-figure demand to finally settle this just feels genuinely insane to me.
There is a particular kind of injustice in having to legally defend what you already are. In the griot tradition , the tradition that shaped mbalax, that shaped Youssou N’Dour, that shaped so much of what I love , a name is not decoration. It is a vessel. It carries lineage, intention, sound. For Tahliah to have spent a decade navigating this while building one of the most singular artistic identities in contemporary music… the courts will settle the legal question, but the cultural question was never really in doubt.
What you’re describing about sonic identity actually maps onto something producers and engineers obsess over , there’s only one mix of ‘Cellophane’ that sounds the way it does in that quiet first half before it opens up. If another act shared that name, someone searching would end up in the wrong place every time. That’s not nothing from a catalog integrity standpoint.
There’s a kind of spiritual violence in having your name , the word that holds your identity, your frequency in the world , turned into a legal battleground. I hope Tahliah finds resolution that lets her breathe again. Your name should be a place of rest, not a courtroom.
Wendy I feel you on the spiritual violence framing but let’s be real , the way this story keeps getting told is like a small band with a guitar and a dream vs. a powerful celebrity machine, and nobody’s asking what The Twigs actually did wrong. They had that name first, they built something with it, and then they got hit with a seven figure demand out of nowhere. That’s not resolution, that’s leverage. I’m not unsympathetic to Tahliah but the framing matters.
FKA Twigs has one of the most distinctive artistic voices of her generation , you hear two bars and you KNOW it’s her. That’s not nothing, that’s everything. The idea that another act could trade on that name and create confusion breaks my heart a little. An artist’s name carries their whole spirit.
Honestly the name thing is interesting to me because in East LA, your name is everything , the placas on the walls, the label on the record, the car club you roll with. In the oldies world you don’t just take a name, it means something, it carries history. Whether it’s FKA Twigs or some other act, the principle is the same. You built that identity, you fought for it, someone else can’t just wear it. Seven figures demand is aggressive but honestly I get why you’d try.
The interesting parallel here is Radiohead and the On a Friday situation , they were On a Friday before they were Radiohead, and the name change was purely practical. But Thom Yorke didn’t go on to sue anyone for seven figures, partly because the stakes were different and partly because, as the article hints, the demand itself changes the narrative. FKA Twigs has an ironclad artistic identity that transcends whatever the courts decide , but the financial ask turns this from a protection story into something murkier.
As someone who uses music in therapeutic contexts, names carry enormous psychological weight , they are the first point of resonance. FKA Twigs built something deeply personal around that identity, and the confusion that comes from name-sharing isn’t just a legal inconvenience. For her listeners, for people who found healing in her work, clarity of identity genuinely matters. I understand both sides, but I don’t think it’s wrong to protect the container that holds so much meaning.
What interests me most here is the temporal asymmetry , FKA twigs built an entire sonic identity around a name that the other band arguably held first, and yet the cultural weight has completely shifted. In city pop and Japanese idol culture, stage names carry enormous institutional power once they’re embedded in a catalogue, a look, a production signature. The question of who ‘owns’ a name when one artist has made it mean something so specific and so large is genuinely complicated, and I don’t think the legal framing quite captures what’s actually at stake artistically.
This kind of dispute actually happened in miniature in the Canadian indie scene a few years back , not gonna name names but two bands from completely different provincial circuits with nearly identical names spent about a year in a low-key cold war over Bandcamp SEO before one of them quietly rebranded. Nobody sued anybody, nobody demanded seven figures, they just sorted it out like human beings at a bar. The thing that strikes me about the FKA twigs situation is the sheer scale of the demand , once you’re asking for that kind of money, you’re not really negotiating anymore, you’re drawing a line in the sand and daring someone to step over it. That’s a different conversation entirely, and it suggests both sides have dug in past the point of practical resolution.
Chip Taylor’s run of hits in the ’60s was just astonishing – ‘Wild Thing,’ ‘Angel of the Morning,’ ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,’ and so many more. The guy just had an uncanny knack for crafting these irresistible pop melodies that sank their hooks into you. I’m sure FKA Twigs wouldn’t mind a little of that Chip Taylor magic rubbing off on her own sound. Legends never die, they just get reincarnated in different forms.
The temporal dimension Keiko raises is actually the most interesting legal wrinkle here. In the vinyl era this dispute would have resolved itself geographically , two bands with similar names could exist in separate markets indefinitely. But streaming collapsed all of that. Now there’s one global catalogue and confusion is baked in structurally. I don’t have a strong view on who’s right, but the industry created this problem by never building a proper namespace for artists.
In Haitian kompa and Caribbean music generally, artist names and band names overlap and shift all the time , a bandleader takes the name with them, a group splits and both halves use the original name for years, nobody sues. It’s messier but also more human somehow. The idea that one name can belong to one person forever feels very North American to me 😅
I just feel for her honestly. FKA Twigs built something so specific and personal , that name is part of her whole artistic identity, the way she moves and makes sound and inhabits a stage. Having to add ‘FKA’ in the first place was already asking her to carry someone else’s problem. I hope she gets what she needs from this.