{"id":709,"date":"2025-03-04T13:30:04","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T14:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/?p=709"},"modified":"2025-03-06T18:22:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T18:22:48","slug":"banks-is-out-of-her-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/04\/banks-is-out-of-her-head\/","title":{"rendered":"Banks Is Out of Her Head"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/assets.rebelmouse.io\/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy81NjYyNzcyMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTc2MDY1NjkwOH0.84wIlt2FA4MSDlTs0MTNQHgMW671pe_p63CnXfC4Qf4\/img.jpg?width=2000&amp;height=1500&amp;coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/hernameisbanks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BANKS<\/a> isn\u2019t very analytical about this stuff. She\u2019s a conduit and the music flows through her. <\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re catching up over Zoom ahead of the release of her next studio album, <em>Off With Her Head<\/em>. Knockout singles have included the fantastic \u201cI Hate Your Ex-Girlfriend,\u201d featuring <em>PAPER<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.papermag.com\/doechii-40th-anniversary\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cover star and recent Grammy winner Doechii<\/a>. She\u2019s also coming off the 10th anniversary of her debut <em>Goddess<\/em>, which pierced Billboard charts and became an instant classic amongst my generational cohort. I ask her about the lessons she learned, about herself or the music, bookending the anniversary with new (to the rest of us) material for her latest project. \u201cI think my relationship with it&#8230; I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s changed. It&#8217;s me. It&#8217;s part of me. Every album I make is like a child of mine,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"rm-shortcode\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"f13ec29391cd705147ab2fa525e8695c\" style=\"padding-top:56.25%\"><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"I Hate Your Ex-Girlfriend (feat. Doechii) (Official Video)\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ozcTLsAbOdo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>For BANKS, \u201cWith music and with writing, for me, it&#8217;s so not a heady process. It&#8217;s natural, like, I just feel like I&#8217;m a medium. It&#8217;s not really an analytical thing, where I can say, &#8216;Oh, it affected it this way.&#8217; I grow and my music grows.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Much of the new album consists of material she started working on in 2013, with collaborators like Sampha and Lil Silva. On how it feels to reconnect, a decade later, on <em>Goddess<\/em>\u2019 \u201clittle sibling\u201d of an album: \u201cI think <em>Goddess&#8230;<\/em> My connection with the people I made it with was so intense, and it was at the beginning of all our careers, and we all needed to do our own thing and develop as our own artists. Coming back to each other after that, and all having grown as artists, it was such a joy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Released last Friday, BANKS says there\u2019s \u201cso many\u201d songs she\u2019s excited for fans to dig into. \u201c\u2018Stay,\u2019 \u2018Meddle In the Mold\u2019 is a fucking beast. I don\u2019t know! It\u2019s hard. I hate having to choose singles. Choosing the focus track when it comes out. The whole album is so special, the direction is such a fun vibe. \u2018Make It Up\u2019 with Sampha, \u2018Guillotine,\u2019 the whole thing!\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><img alt=\"\" class=\"rm-shortcode lazyload\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"d44c2ff3994d766abfc48d51a0788a26\" data-rm-shortcode-name=\"rebelmouse-image\" id=\"c0f31\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img-37.jpg\"><\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><strong>How long have you been putting <em>Off With Her Head <\/em>together now?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Honestly, since 2013. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Walk me through that experience, going back 12 years. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I started a few of them that long ago. This feels like it\u2019s another first album to me, because of that. Some songs were started and finished within the year, some of them started 10 years ago. <\/p>\n<p><strong>What was it like to go back to work you started that long ago? Did it feel like there\u2019s been so many versions of yourself since, did it feel like coming back to yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a mix, because yes, I\u2019ve grown so much, but it\u2019s funny. My connection to music and the certain, specific melodies I\u2019m drawn to, are always the same. The same way I felt about those songs when I started them is the same way I felt about them when I rediscovered them and finished them. It\u2019s been a really beautiful thing. <\/p>\n<p><strong>I was listening to the new album, and I can definitely hear pieces of <em>Goddess<\/em> on it, which you\u2019ve said is the little sibling to this album. How did you rediscover the work, a notebook, a hard drive?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are certain songs I always knew I wanted to finish, and then I made a few songs, like \u201cStay\u201d and \u201cDelulu\u201d and it reminded me of these other songs. For some reason, they fit together. It was a natural thing, it wasn\u2019t really thought out. And coming back together with Lil Silva was just the best. I\u2019m so happy that we\u2019re back in the mode.<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><strong>You talk about going back to work with producers that you worked with on <em>Goddess<\/em>. How did that feel?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My connection with the people I made <em>Goddess<\/em> with was so intense, and it was at the beginning of all our careers, and we all needed to do our own thing and develop as our own artists. Coming back to each other after that, and all having grown as artists, it was such a joy. And it&#8217;s really fun finding a new dynamic and a new vibe in the studio, and it felt right. I don&#8217;t know, sometimes things feel right. There&#8217;s not really a reason I can put to it. I mean, the song \u201cMove\u201d is a song I started with Silva a few years ago, and we didn&#8217;t finish it. I don&#8217;t love working remotely. I like being in the room with someone. So I made my own version of it, and I texted him, and I was like, \u201cHey, I&#8217;m gonna put this on the album.\u201d And he was like, our version is better. And so I was like, &#8220;Okay, fine, let&#8217;s just finish it remotely,&#8221; because he&#8217;s in the UK. And then it all happened from there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you feel like your relationship to <em>Goddess<\/em>, going back now, has changed at all over the years? Did you discover something new about what you made with it?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t discover anything new. A lot of the time when artists release their first albums, that&#8217;s how people fall in love with them. So people have a deep attachment to that album. And so a lot of artists, it feels as if my other work is just as important, just as special. And that&#8217;s why maybe you get that vibe of artists shunning their old work, because sometimes it can be frustrating when people want you to stay the way you were in the past, and that they fall in love with you one way, and they don&#8217;t want you to grow. I felt that before for sure, because Goddess had such an impact. It affected a lot of people. I&#8217;m so grateful for that, but it was a celebration, this 10 year anniversary with it, and I think my relationship with it&#8230; No, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s changed. It&#8217;s me. It&#8217;s part of me. Every album I make is like a child of mine. And definitely now, like when I was re-singing those songs, it felt like, it&#8217;s the difference of remembering something painful and going through something painful. It&#8217;s like, damn, I went through that and I got through it. But having those same collaborators on this album, it feels like a rebirth, and I&#8217;m really excited about it.<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><img alt=\"\" class=\"rm-shortcode lazyload\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"cf3ba4f6ed38dae593c81a25cf58a31b\" data-rm-shortcode-name=\"rebelmouse-image\" id=\"e22ee\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img-38.jpg\"><\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><strong>Speaking of rebirths, I was reading an interview that you did during your last album cycle where you talked about taking the reins on <em>Serpentina<\/em> and co-producing that album. How did that confidence and that experience of taking the reins on that album translate to making this new album?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know. Again, it\u2019s funny, because with music and with writing, for me, it&#8217;s so not a heady process. It&#8217;s natural, like, I feel like I&#8217;m a medium. It&#8217;s not really like an analytical thing, where I can say, like, oh, it affected it this way. I grow and my music grows. Definitely, production wise, now I&#8217;ve got a hand in everything, always, and I always really did. I just didn&#8217;t know how to engineer. So now I do. Every artist should learn how to do that, because it&#8217;s like, you&#8217;ve got only one arm if you don&#8217;t know how&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><strong>So much of your writing and lyricism feels, I don\u2019t want to say like a diary entry, because that feels infantile, but very much drawing from your own personal experience.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is, though; it\u2019s like my personal diary entries!<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><strong>On this new album, were there specific experiences you drew from when making it, or a time in your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This album is really cool in that it draws from multiple part times in my life. \u201cLove Is Unkind\u201d is about a really toxic relationship that I was in, probably my most abusive relationship I&#8217;ve been in, and \u201cStay\u201d is about my most wonderful relationship, and the one I&#8217;m currently in. What&#8217;s cool about this album is it&#8217;s not from one time, so it really represents a body of experiences. It&#8217;s not just one facet. It takes you through the growth of me as a human, as a person.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Does music become a way to process those experiences, in the aftermath?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Music, for me, it&#8217;s got no time limit, because it&#8217;s either a fortune teller or it&#8217;s a way to process the past. I started \u201cMake It Up\u201d a decade ago with Sampha and Silva, and we wrote the hook in 2013. We hadn&#8217;t worked together in so long. And then we came back together, and the chorus, it&#8217;s about what happened and coming back together. So it feels like a fortune teller in that way, where sometimes when you write something, you don&#8217;t even know why it came out, but it&#8217;s like it came out because of something that&#8217;s gonna happen in the future.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So often you hear about the way music affects its listeners. You hear a song, and you associate it with a memory or a time in your life. I don\u2019t often hear that artists think of their own songs like that too, these little time capsules of your life.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>They are time capsules for me. They\u2019re much more accurate than a photo or video.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Because it\u2019s coming directly from your soul, your heart.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Exactly. It\u2019s not like a picture of your outsides. It\u2019s your guts. Music, for me, is like my insides.<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><img alt=\"\" class=\"rm-shortcode lazyload\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"fb01e8923637f3907695346e57569c16\" data-rm-shortcode-name=\"rebelmouse-image\" id=\"595ef\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img-39.jpg\"><\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><strong>More on the visuals and fashion aesthetics of the album, I love the cover, and the mask and big hair, which is so glam and gab to me. Walk me through how you though the visuals of this new era you\u2019re entering.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m in such a free-flowing, creative place. I wanted to have fun with it. I wanted to be fearless and get out of my head, which is what <em><em>Off With Her Head <\/em><\/em>means. It&#8217;s getting out of your head and into your body and into your joy and into the present moment. I had a lot of fun with it. You know, \u201cI Hate Your Ex-Girlfriend,\u201d that video with Doechii and Charlie Denis directing, it was so much fun to make. I&#8217;m just having a lot of fun.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The video continues one of my favorite pop music traditions, of women on a pop song with the bed choreography. I was thinking of Madonna and Britney in \u201cMe Against the Music.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That was definitely one of the inspirations for the video. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you have a favorite music video, now that I\u2019m thinking about it. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I grew up with TRL, so it&#8217;s like, for sure, I do. I mean, any Missy Elliott video, Gwen Stefani used to kill, she&#8217;s an icon. And, yeah, I mean, every Britney video was always iconic. Fiona Apple, \u201cNever is a Promise.\u201d It&#8217;s one of my favorite songs, and that video is incredible, stunning, and her \u201cFast As You Can\u201d video too, where she&#8217;s like, going backwards in time while singing. It&#8217;s crazy. I mean, I love music videos. It&#8217;s kind of a shame that they aren&#8217;t as important these days, like that now it&#8217;s all about short form content and quantity over quality. People don&#8217;t really watch music videos how they used to, and so labels and people in the business don&#8217;t really want to focus on it as much, which I totally get because they&#8217;re really expensive. But for certain songs, it&#8217;s important and very much worth it.<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><strong>We\u2019re the same age, and we come from a time when our perception of artists were shaped by music videos they were putting out. It\u2019s interesting to think that newer generations don\u2019t really have the same relationship to their favorite artists that we did.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot less mystery. It\u2019s very much like, what did you eat for breakfast today? Sometimes, I hate to say this, but sometimes I feel like artists feel like monkeys now, dancing, like, make a skit. Do a funny TikTok, do a dance. Like, do a comedy routine. Sneeze and go viral, so maybe you&#8217;ll discover your music, like it&#8217;s so gross.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I\u2019ve read so much about your influences, and who you were inspired by when first making music, but who are the artists that you\u2019re listening to now? What is on your playlist, so to speak?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Let me open my Spotify.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I love this, love knowing about people\u2019s Spotify histories.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Fridayy, his song \u201cWhen It Comes to You,\u201d I love that. I really love Clairo, I love that song \u201cSexy For Someone.\u201d Sasha Keable, crazy voice. Oklou, Sampha, obviously. Khruanbin. So many. There\u2019s so much talent in the world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What, if anything, are you really excited for people to hear from this album?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So many. \u201cStay\u201d and \u201cMetal In the Mold\u201d is a fucking beast. I don\u2019t know! It\u2019s hard. I hate having to choose singles&#8230; choosing the focus track when it comes out. The whole album is so special, the direction is such a fun vibe. \u201cMake It Up\u201d with Sampha, \u201cGuillotine,\u201d the whole thing!<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><img alt=\"\" class=\"rm-shortcode lazyload\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"a197bce93e46707969d2e27c41b7737f\" data-rm-shortcode-name=\"rebelmouse-image\" id=\"a7112\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/img-40.jpg\"><\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[This album] takes you through the growth of me as a human, as a person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><em>Photography: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/charliedenis\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Charlie Denis<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BANKS isn\u2019t very analytical about this stuff. She\u2019s a conduit and the music flows through her. We\u2019re catching up over Zoom ahead of the release of her next studio album, Off With Her Head. Knockout singles have included the fantastic \u201cI Hate Your Ex-Girlfriend,\u201d featuring PAPER cover star and recent Grammy winner Doechii. She\u2019s also coming off the 10th anniversary of her debut Goddess, which pierced Billboard charts and became an instant classic amongst my generational cohort. I ask her &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/04\/banks-is-out-of-her-head\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Banks Is Out of Her Head&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":717,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions\/717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}