In the latest issue of Music Week, Banks opens up about her excellent new album Off With Her Head! Released Friday February 28 via ADA, Off With Her Head! – sees her collaborate with the likes of Sampha and Doechii, continue her journey as an independent artist and join forces with Tap Music management behind the scenes.
Suffice to say, the star – real name Jillian Rose Banks – is feeling incredibly excited about where she is heading right now.
“If I have a weird idea, Tap are like, ‘Let’s fucking go!’ and they figure a way to do it,” she told Music Week. “You can’t do anything [alone]. When you see an artist killing it, it’s not just them – they’ve got an amazing team behind them. Somebody said to me once, ‘Don’t switch managers too much, you don’t want to be known as that artist that can’t find a manager they like.’ Nobody would have said that to a man. I kept that in my heart for a long time, but then I was like, ‘Fuck it.’ Tap have just been so supportive.”
In our interview, Banks addressed embracing independence, working with Doechii and the prospect of finally getting her flowers for the impact she’s had on the sound of contemporary pop.
Here, in unread extract of our catch-up, Banks talks finishing a years-in-the-making Sampha collaboration, why she hasn’t given up on making music videos, how she’s finally embracing social media and the things she wish she knew at the start of her career…
As well as hooking up with Doechii on this album, you’ve also got Sampha on Make It Up. How did that collaboration come about?
“That song's got a beautiful story. I actually started it with Sampa and [producer] Silva in 2013 in London on my very first writing trip. I still have photos and videos from that day. I reached out to Silva, like, ‘Why have we not finished this song, it’s so good?’ Randomly, he was like, ‘Have you mentioned it to Sampha’s manager? Because he randomly hit me up yesterday saying we should finish the song’. I was like, ‘That's so weird!’ I hadn't talked about the song in years. We finished it, and it was just amazing. We hadn’t really written it, we just had the hook, ‘making up for lost time’, and it’s funny because it is making up for lost time. It’s pretty cool.”
One of the things that’s very interesting when we look at your career is that, in a time when a lot of people are hyper-focused on short-form content, you still very much deliver elaborate music videos. Why do you still believe in them so much as a medium?
“It is tough [to make them], especially as I'm not on a major label anymore, which is great, because I own my own music. But there's definitely less budget for visuals and stuff. To be honest, logically, with where the culture is at and where the business is at, it is probably a lot smarter just to make a bunch of TikToks and not spend the money, because they don't really do anything. But I just love creating that world. People don't watch videos how they used to, like when TRL was around, but I just love making them. It's just another form of creativity to express a world that I'm creating. I Hate Your Ex-Girlfriend video was so fun to make. Charlie Dennis is a genius, he directed it and Doecchi is so down for anything and we were all just like, ‘Let's go!’”
I FaceTimed my dad after Coachella, and he said, ‘Why are you crying? Do you not like doing this? You're so sad all the time’... I’ve had to do a lot of work to un-scramble my head
Banks
One thing that certainly seems different this time around is that you're doing TikToks and YouTube Shorts, and lots of other promotional things that you once seemed to shy away from…
“I mean, it's a different world right now in music, I think TikTok and Instagram and all that is just so ingrained in marketing and stuff, and it's not natural for me, at least, but I'm finding my own relationship. I’m doing it, and it's not as uncomfortable as it used to be. It's not as serious as it used to be, either. And that's helped me a lot, too. I have other things in my life that mean a lot to me – before, my worth depended on my career, whereas now I have a full life. I always could have had a full life, I just only cared about one thing. It just comes with growing. I definitely don't think I could have functioned continuing the way I was, because it's like constantly wanting to hide while being in a career where you're literally not supposed to do that. You're supposed to be talking to people about your music, doing interviews that are filmed and it was always a battle before, and I was just anxious and miserable, really. I was constantly fighting the fact that I was supposed to be seen. I had to decide, like, ‘Do I want to do this or not? Do I want to make music and perform it?’ And yeah, I do. I'm sure there are some people who never want to promote [their music] at all, but for me, I love it. I just had to accept that, ‘Yes, you're gonna be seen, people will know who you are, people are gonna see your face, or just don't do what you're doing.’ I was just coming up against a wall because I kept fighting it. Today, I've had a bunch of interviews and a lot of on camera stuff, and at the beginning of my career that would have been so stressful, I would have been so drained by the end of the day, because it was just hard for me. Now, I’m more okay with it, it's not as much energy, because I don't have so much anxiety. I didn't come into this business being like, ‘I want to be a star! I want to be famous! Let's take photos!’ And I had to get used to that and adjust to it. And so I think that's probably what you're feeling from the outside looking in, is just somebody who's stopped battling that side of the job.”
You certainly seem much more open these days compared to the start of your career…
“I agree with you. You're definitely right. I remember I was on the cover of The Guardian once, and this journalist flew to LA to interview me, and I felt so uncomfortable sharing anything. She would ask me any question and rather than just answer direct, because I just didn't want to share anything, I would answer in metaphors and colours. She was probably like, ‘This fucking bitch!’ [laughs] They ended up ringing up my management after and being like, ‘She did not answer enough! She needs to answer some more questions – we don't have enough to write about.’ It was also a lot of energy trying to find ways around saying things! Do you know what I mean? But for me, it wasn't some contrived ‘I want to be mysterious’ thing.”
In an interview with Vogue, you said you wish you could mother the Banks that made your debut Goddess. What specifically needed mothering at that time?
“Oh, God, so much. Just heavy anxiety. Picking yourself apart. And to be honest, I used to just be so depressed after every show. I remember after the second time I played Coachella, my band and dancers went out that night and were celebrating and watching other artists play at the festival. And I just went to my hotel and cried the whole night. I FaceTimed my dad, and he's like, ‘Why are you crying? Did you not like how the show went?’ And I was like, ‘No, I think it was fine.’ And he was like, ‘Well, do you not like doing this? Because you're so sad all the time’. What would happen is I would get off stage and I would get really depressed, and I would start picking myself apart, but I didn't really know why I was doing that. And looking back, I think it might just be simply being an introvert, and then being on stage in front of thousands of people. That in itself is what was hard. And rather than making that connection, and just being at peace with that, and working through that, I would be like, ‘Why am I so uncomfortable?’ I would look for other reasons, and those reasons would be the things I could control, so I would pick myself apart. It was really confusing and very layered, I’ve had to do a lot of work to un-scramble those lines in my head. But that's a lot of what it is. I just wanted to share my music, but it was hard for me and now I've accepted you're either gonna live your life battling what's happening, or just flow – and I'm ready to flow.”
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