Vice

**Vice** is a Canadian-American print magazine focused on lifestyle, arts, culture, and news/politics. Banks did three interviews for their website on 2013 and 2015. They also posted a colored version of the music video for "This Is What It Feels Like" on their Youtube channel.

## Interview #1

Break ups. They’re never pretty, they’re always kinda shitty, but songs would be barren and bland without them. Heartbreak is the foundation on which 98% of great music is built. We wouldn’t have the seething, clenched-jaw rage of “The Ruiner” by Nine Inch Nails, or the end-of-it-all ache of Blur’s “No Distance Left To Run,” or the bitter clarity that comes with really pulling apart from someone (Fleetwood Mac's “Dreams”), if we didn't have all those relationship wranglings siphoned into song. Of course for every “I’m Afraid The Masquerade Is Over,” there’s 500 cliché-addled tunes about getting screwed over, or duped, or dumped, and getting over it.

But there’s still a thrill in finding an artist working this well-worn subject with lyrics that hit harder than a well-aimed right hook. Sometimes the power lies in the minutia, or a surprising cadence, which is exactly what made BANKS’ first song, “Before Ever Met You,” so arresting. Stuck up online some five months ago, the LA valley-born native’s debut solo song works a laconic trip-hop groove, her vocals dripping with a knowing sensuality as she slowly paces out the line: “As for our house/I’ll move out/You can keep the dog we trained.” It’s a tiny, disintegrating-relationship detail, but it’s all in her delivery.

Since then BANKS has released two more tracks—“Fall Over” and the sulkily soulful “Warm Water,” with Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs—both backed by intimate, black and white videos. Noisey called her up, just before she jetted off to London for the month of July, to talk bad break ups, music as therapy and shooting videos in your underwear. (And P.S. You should check out her collaboration with Lil Silva. So good.)

**Let’s talk about “Before I Ever Met You.” Where did that come from?**

When my first serious relationship broke up, it was hard. It came from feeling so confused, from loving someone, but hating someone and needing someone, and knowing they’re still bad for you and knowing you’re bad for them too.Were you surprised by the online response?
Yeah, I was very surprised. But it was so wonderful, I love being able to touch people. That stuff is universal—you know, you have a hard time with somebody that you love or hate. The fact that people were connecting with it so soon was the best feeling in the world.

**How did you end up hooking up with director Dylan Knight? He’s done two videos for you, right?**

Yeah he’s done my only videos. I knew what I wanted aesthetically for my videos and we were just trying to find the right director and my manager came across his stuff and I thought, “That’s it, that’s perfect.”

**There's definitely an atmospheric, cinematic aesthetic to those videos. How important is it for you that your visual image and how you project yourself works with the music?**

It’s very important. Music is such a visual thing, when you feel it, you can see it, and I just want all of my visuals to perfectly represent what they represent to me. When I saw Dylan’s stuff it was all really moody, dark, sexy, and almost a little bit scary and my first two songs that came out, they have that darkness and some fear too. I saw all that in his stuff.

**How did you feel about hanging out in your underwear for the “Fall Over” video?**

That was actually my idea. That song is just about raw vulnerability, and I felt that was the best way to show it. I wanted it to be tasteful, of course. It was pretty easy for me, especially the vibe that Dylan has, he’s all about creating the mood and he made me feel really comfortable. When we did those scenes I kicked everybody else out of the room, it was just him and me. It was really cool.

**You also get pretty intimate with LA rapper Joon in the video for “Warm Water” (above). How did you end up choosing him?**

I’m a fan of his group OverDoz. I just think they’re so cool and when I was thinking of who I wanted for the video, I just thought he represents everything I wanted. He seems kind of like a creature to me. He’s just breathtakingly beautiful. I hadn’t even met him and he came to the studio and he’s the sweetest person, but he’s really goofy and fun too.

**When did you realize you could sing?**

That’s a good question. The realization that I could sing came with writing. I started writing because I felt like I had to get these thoughts out that I didn’t how else to express. Someone gave me a keyboard when I was about 15 and I started playing and melodies came out that would just make me feel better.

**What were you going through at 15 that you felt like you needed to get out of your system?**

I’m sure most teenagers at that age have a tough time with various things, but it was a lot of family stuff, parents fighting, being alone in the house, not really knowing who you are as a woman. It’s that weird age when you’re a kid and you start viewing yourself as a woman.

**What’s your biggest non-musical influence?**

The people around me, my friends, my family. I’m really sensitive and when I love somebody, I can feel their pain. Sometimes my songs are inspired by other people’s journey too.

**Specifically, are there any of your songs that are inspired by another person’s story?**

They all have a sense of it. I have an EP coming out [in the fall] and “Drowning” is inspired by my best friend who was having a hard time with someone. I’m able to write about it because I can connect it with my own experiences. It frustrates me so much and saddens me so much because I’ve gone through [what she went through] as well. I know what it's like. That first break up that I told you about? That was eight years ago. I still write about him. I feel it so hard.

**The first real break up is so formative. And so devastating.**

Yeah, your first experience with love, your eyes open for the first time and you’re like, “This is what it is! This is amazing! I didn’t even know what this was!” And then, when its taken away from you… my first boyfriend cheated on me, that’s why we broke up. The best way to describe it is like a train hits you from behind. I felt like I was a little girl before it happened. Getting through that, I feel so much more confident and I feel stronger as a woman. But that first break up, it hurts.

**And also when someone cheats on you, it’s that loss of innocence. Like, I didn’t even think that was possible that someone could break trust like that.**

Yeah, you learn about people, about yourself, and you learn about what you can handle, how strong you are, how weak you are. You learn about everything. You have to forgive yourself for not knowing. There’s so many things that go into it and you just grow so much.

**How old are you? Some female artists get weird about sharing their age…**

I’m 25. I’m not weird about it. Wrinkles are beautiful.

**It’s when female artists start edging towards 30, they tend to want to keep it vague. It’s a shame.**

I think late-20s, early-30s is the absolute sexiest period in a woman’s life. You have to embrace your goddess.

**Have you been making music steadily since you were 15? Did you have a day job?**

I went to school for psychology, I got my bachelors. I’ve always been really in touch with my own feelings and I’ve always been really affected by other people. I just wanted to learn more about everything and what goes on in the mind. Meanwhile, I was writing the entire time, I write because I have to, it’s like air for me. After college, I knew music was what I wanted to do and I was just a struggling artist.

**Not struggling so much anymore.**

## Interviews #2

I’m sitting on the pavement with my arse hanging out my trousers and my crumb-covered laptop splayed on my lap. I’m supposed to meet Banks in a minute, but I don’t know what she looks like. Well not exactly, after all I’ve seen her photograph on iTunes when I listen to “Before I Ever Met You”, her unflinchingly uncomfortable monologue about a relationship on the brink, and on stage playing to a pin-drop crowd at her first London show at Notting Hill Arts Club - but I’m not sure I could pick her out of a crowd.

When she arrives, dressed like a 40s filmstar at a funeral, she is the most plainly obvious popstar you’re ever likely to see. As I brush Hobnob remnants from my jeans and walk with her to a private members club, I feel like I should have made more of an effort. Even the door snobs at the reception reel off a list of A-listers she’s the spitting image of.

Banks has only released a h­­­andful of tracks, but each one of them leaves you breathless. “Warm Water” with its gentle, enveloping production and lyrics about the submergence of new attraction, “Waiting Game” about the pain and passion of a long distance relationship and “Before I Ever Met You” about when love turns poisonous. These are not unusual things to write about, but Banks feels like she’s coming afresh. Some of these songs have been sitting on a dictaphone for years, unheard by anyone but their author. Banks spent the first 10 years of her career, “just writing in my room. It was hard to come out of my shell cause all of my music’s so personal to me. A lot of people were surprised when they found my career, they’d be like 'you’re a singer?'"

While Banks was secretly songwriting, she went to college in LA where she studied psychology. At the end of her degree she wrote her thesis, about children of divorced families, “whether they view marriage differently and whether or not they’re more or less likely to get married.” Are they? “I never really found out.” Is Banks a child of divorced parents? “Yes.” Does she view marriage differently? “I’m still finding out.”

After spending three years studying human emotion and insecurity, Banks started to take music more seriously. She has notebooks of lyrics, gathered over years, but quickly realised they weren’t going to be enough. “Back in the day, I used to record things on the tape recorder. Then I started writing in a notebook but I couldn’t get my thoughts out fast enough. I couldn’t write fast enough and it would drive me crazy and my handwriting would be so bad I couldn’t read it later. So then I started writing it on the notes in my phone, that’s what I kinda do now, then I record it in my voice memo thing.” But, isn’t the problem with iPhone notes that you scrawl them down and then never remember what they mean afterwards? On my notes at the moment I have something that says “tell me about Black Brian”. I have no idea what that’s referring to. “That never happens to me. I could write three words, three random words: ‘red’, ‘pinball’, ‘insane’ and I could see them three years later and I could know exactly the day I wrote it.

What’s the last note on her phone then? “Can I say my notes if they’re gonna be lyrics to my next song? Ok. "‘I hang on everything you say, knowing that I imply all the secret things that you’re in love with me. Finally when I let myself fall hard for you. I see you pretend like I’m making it up.’”

Banks is on her first work trip to the UK, flying across the Atlantic to get in the studio with frontal lobe producers like Sohn and TEED. It’s a process she finds kinetic. “It’s the most amazing feeling when you go into the studio and you know nothing about the person you’re working with and then you start writing, and the most raw and emotional stuff , stuff that they probably wouldn’t tell who they’re married and who they’re close with, just comes out. “

You sense it’s not just producers from whom Banks can elicit the sort of secrets normally saved for confession or deathbeds. This is the first proper interview she’s done. Artists in this nascent stage of the career are normally fans of stuttered sentences and the middle distance, but Banks doesn’t break eye contact the entire time we talk. She seems like the sort of person that other people want to tell their secrets to.

“I’ve always been the therapist of my friends, I don’t know why. I think it’s cause I feel everything so hard. I love talking and I love gearing about others, I’m really interested in other people.”

That “hair full of secrets”, as too-gay-to-function Damien from Mean Girls would say, is the secret to Banks’overpowering lyrics. Songs that tell the simple stories of attraction and rejection in ways that sound uncomfortably true. Great lyricists, like Carly Simon or Jarvis Cocker, have always been able to bring pointed and specific couplets out of the raw wash of emotion. Banks can extract a person’s darkest secret and work it back into a song.

We talk for a lot longer than the interview, get breakfast (Quinoa bowl and fruit plate in case you’re wondering), and swap tips for our respective hometowns. We talk about other things too. Relationships and emotions and world perspectives. As I leave, shoving my yoghurt stained phone back into my crumby backpack, I wonder, in long rambling moments whether I too succumbed to Banks' unique ability to extract the truth.

## Interview #3

It’s the middle of the day in Chelsea, in New York City, and Banks is standing in a box. Actually, it’s more like a capsule that at first glance looks like a giant dressing room in a mall department store, but when you walk in, it’s trippy as shit. Whoever’s in the box can be seen from the outside, but when you’re standing inside, all you can see is mirrors reflecting your image ad infinitum, before they fade into zig-zagging lights. This is the setup Banks has come up with for her performance on the Late Show With David Letterman. She’s one of the last artists to grace his stage before his final curtain call in May. Right now she’s standing outside of the box in SIR Studios during rehearsal looking perplexed. She's concerned with the cameras angles, keen that the correct cues are hit. If done right it will look like a Matrix, but if the angles are wrong, the desired effect will be lost. The aim is to utilize the house of mirrors on her upcoming tour dates, but right now, Letterman is the focus.

“Artists sound amazing on Letterman,” a label figurehead chimes in from the studio couch. Banks is signed to Capitol Records’-acquired imprint Harvest Records, home to other acts like Matt and Kim, TV On The Radio, and Death Grips. “Every time I see someone perform on Letterman, they sound awesome,” he reiterates.

“Well, OK, I’m excited now,” Banks says. This is a big deal for Banks, perhaps a bigger deal than for other artists. Ever since the Orange County-native hit the blogs back in 2013, she's been big but not overly visible. (Noisey jumped on her in the summer of that year, funding her first ever color video for “This Is What it Feels Like.” Watch it below.) Sure she’s sold out shows (both on her own and supporting The Weeknd) and we’ve watched the roll out of captivating videos “Brain,” “Drowning,” and the most recent “Beggin For Thread”—all off last year's debut album, Goddess, but even if her cellphone number is still on her official Facebook page, Banks curates her image and public interactions closely, and she's highly focused on the music.

Goddess broke the Top 20 in the US, along with several other territories, including the UK, a particular point on the map that has Banks’ heart. She even titled her first EPLondon as an homage to the city that inspired her to record it, savvily aligning herself with the English capital’s finest music-makers including Lil Silva and Jamie Woon. (Her full length included collaborations with UK-based artists Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Sohn.) The Goddess remix album’s just been released, featuring remixes from producers like Chainsmokers, Salva, and Lido. Ever since Banks became blog fodder, she's been a remixer's dream. She loves it, and despite being one of the brightest new stars of last year, considers it an honor that someone would even want to remix her music.

Shy isn’t the word to describe the woman born Jillian Rose Banks, and neither is reserved. Guarded is probably the most appropriate, considering the singer holds on to every fiber of a private life she can grab. That sounds impossible when you're a sought after artist, where everyone is clamoring for a piece of you. But Banks really tries. Even as she stands in a packed studio for her own rehearsal, she tucks herself into the leather couch whenever she doesn’t have to be present. Still, when she does emerge to practice her performance, she’s a lion. Standing in a black Thierry Mugler dress with wedge boots, and no make-up—not even the signature “wings on fleek” eyeliner that typically decorates her eyes for her shows—the 26-year-old is naturally gorgeous. As she steps back into her electric castle to rehearse “Beggin For Thread” once again, she delivers her vocals with more intensity, flanked by a drummer and a keyboardist set up on opposite ends outside of the capsule. Every time she raises her arms while she sings, the mirrors multiply them: she looks like a Hindu deity. With that last take deemed solid, Banks celebrates by taking a breather and changing out of her performance clothes—pants and a blouse, all black, of course.

We walk out to the studio lobby where Carly Rae Jepsen is smiling for photos with random engineers. Jepsen’s eyes lock onto Banks, who doesn’t appear to notice. Banks is tugging at her shirt: “Could I wear this on Letterman?” she asks. Meanwhile Carly Rae looks like she’s about to shout, “Call me! Maybe?” at her. That’s the greatest thing about Banks. She’s awesome and she has no idea. When she speaks, her responses are thoughtful, sometimes profound, mostly abstract, yet not inaccessible—much like her music.

“Did you think you would get this big?” I ask her. “Noooo,” she says shaking her head. “I don’t feel like that at all.” Noisey caught up with Banks after her Letterman performance to talk life transitions, privacy, how she combats stage fright, and what’s next.

**How did the concept for the capsule come into your head?**

I haven’t done much TV, and when I do things I just want it to feel 100 percent me even if it’s out of my element, so I wanted to bring my world into a live setting, and I wanted it to be special. I was thinking a lot about what I wanted to do, and I fell into this idea.

**Were you happy with how everything turned out?**

I was! I had never done anything like that before. At a certain point you care so much about your art and what you do and then when you rehearse and you get there, you put so much heart and thought into it and when it finally happens you have to have fun with it. Once you’re there, you’re there.

**What was it like internally to know you had a whole crowd out there that you couldn’t see?**

It was pretty crazy. I actually liked it because I was able to be in my own little world. It was a special thing for me. It was a milestone for me to do.

**What has the world of Banks been like over the past 12 months?**

Very crazy. Lots of touring, non-stop touring. Just growing. You get put in these situations that are not natural, especially for a creature that is me. I’m very private, and I’m not very used to being seen so much, and that’s been a huge transition for me. That’s why this performance is very interesting for me, because I can’t hide. I’m in a mirrored box and there’s like every single part of me showing, every single angle. Sometimes people see themselves differently from how others see them, and that’s kind of what this is for me also: I can’t see out of this mirrored pentagon that I’m in, and everyone else can see inside. So I’m seeing myself probably completely differently than everybody else is seeing me.

Every experience someone has is in relation to how they are thinking, what they’re feeling and what they’re going through. And so sometimes people can go through times where they feel horrible and they feel sad and then they look back and they’re like, “Oh my God I actually looked really powerful and beautiful.” Sometimes that’s how I’ve been in this process.

**Do you listen back to your music and remember that deep dark place and think, “Shit, but this is really powerful”?**

I like that place though.

**Is that where your zip code is?**

No, my zip code is everywhere, I’m everywhere, but that place—you can’t be scared of it, because for me if I don’t go to that place then I would literally be a hunchback, the gravity would be so heavy. So that’s where I go, and once you sing it you have this bad ass way of getting it out, because you’re singing songs like “Before I Ever Met You” and songs that come from that place, that zip code that we were saying. You sing them and you feel like a boss when you’re singing it. You’ve like overcome something.

**How do you get into that frame of mind and get to that place when you create?**

I don’t have to get myself in the mood, life gets me in that mood, and then I have to make music to get myself out of that mood if that makes sense.

**You’re one of the few artists who has managed to maintain a low profile and privacy in your life. Was that something you vowed to do coming into this, like “I need to stay human above all”?**

Oh my God, yeah. When I say it’s been a transition for me, it’s been hard for me to… I don’t know where it comes from really. I’m very private, well, maybe private isn’t even the word. Sometimes I don’t like to be seen. Sometimes I wish I was invisible. Sometimes I just want to feel and breathe, but not be seen and just observe. But then around my core people that I’m really comfortable with, I feel like I can exist without being seen, but also in a louder way, if that makes any sense. But it’s been a huge transition, especially touring non-stop. Some shows you feel really strong before and you go out there and you feel great, and some shows you just don’t feel like being seen and then you go on stage. I remember this one show I had and I had never gotten so dark before a show. I just went to that place that I needed to write. It was that mood that I get in, and then I went on stage and I was feeling like every pore was hurting with eyes. But it was incredible because I got through it. I wanted to cry after because it was just like “I did it.” That’s why I say I’m learning so much, because you should be seen.

It’s funny because your performance at Irving Plaza before the Goddess tour was packed with bros. And they were there chanting your lyrics, and they looked like the type of people who really don’t think much throughout their day, but it was proof that your music and lyrics can bring anyone to that place.
Sometimes I feel like my lyrics are the most animalistic part of me. It’s like I get gritty in them. I am in my music who I wish I was every second of the day, but you just don’t have energy to feel that much. You would probably explode.

**Do you get stage fright a lot?**

Always. [Laughs.]

**Really? You can’t tell. How do you get past it?**

I do different things. It depends on what I’m feeling. I meditate before shows, I like to be alone before shows. I don’t like anyone around me for like an hour before shows. I just need to breathe.

**Talk to me about this Goddess remix album. It seems like people have been remixing you from the moment you hit.**

Yeah! That’s been really cool for me, to hear people that I admire remix me. I think people wouldn’t remix a song unless it touched them. It’s fun to hear different versions, but it keeps the same heartbeat of the song. It keeps the same message or tone. You can switch up a song from a heavy dragging song to something a little more fast-paced, but the tone can stay the same—that’s really interesting to hear. And remixes have really just been a big part of my path because, like you said, they just started coming out and it was really exciting for me to hear them. And because there were so many, we decided to put some of them out.

**What do you have coming up?**

I want to record, I want to work on my live show more. I’m really inspired right now. I just want to create right, whether that’s visually or making music. I definitely need to make music; I feel like I need that right now more than anything. I’m going to be in the studio and I might go to London to work with some people that I’m excited about. I’m going to do a bunch of festivals soon, so I’m excited about that. And there’s something special that’s coming in the next few months that I can’t really talk about, but my mind is just swirling around it right now.
**Which artists are you feeling right now? Who is inspiring you?**

There’s a girl named Nao. I really like her. She has this song called “So Good” (above). Always Lil Silva, he’s my boy, the D’Angelo song “Really Love” on his Black Messiah album. I love that song, it’s so beautiful. Those are just a few that I’m enjoying right now, but when I’m creating music I don’t really listen to much music. I just dive into what I’m making with who I’m making it with. Or I’m doing it alone. Either way I’m so focused in what I’m creating that I’ll go to the studio and I’ll make it, and then I’m going to listen to it all night and keep writing to it. It’s like I dive so deep into it that I don’t really have an urge to listen to anything else in that moment. It’s all consuming.

**Are you reading any books?**

I actually just bought a book I’m so excited to read. I just finished reading The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. I love stories, and I just picked up this book by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, who is this incredible feminist and she wrote this book called Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths And Stories Of The Wild Woman Archetype, it’s kind of about embracing your inner animalistic female self in the most empowered way possible. I’m really feeling that. I feel powerful right now.

**So if you weren’t here being Banks, where do you think you would be?**

On another planet… doing the same thing.

## References

<references>

1. ↑ https://www.vice.com/en\_us/article/rgd876/meet-banks-she-knows-how-to-turn-heartbreak-into-greatness
2. ↑ https://www.vice.com/en\_uk/article/rzv9y9/banks
3. ↑ https://www.vice.com/en\_us/article/rgpw57/jojo-interview-2015