March 16, 2025 |
Jillian Banks, the singer, songwriter and producer known as Banks, has stepped into her power. Over the past decade, she has been subtly but unmistakably influencing the pop landscape through her dark, hushed tones over a hybrid of alternative, R&B-infused electro-pop with bass-driven production. A decade on since the release of her genre-bending debut album Goddess – Ethel Cain, Lorde and Doechii are fans – Banks is fully backing herself, starting a new era with the release of her fifth record, Off with Her Head.
“This almost feels like the beginning of chapter two for me,” says Banks, 36. Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, California, she is Zooming in from her home in Seattle, which she shares with her fiancé. It’s a place that has been “soul-nourishing and really positive for my nervous system”. She attributes the lightness and joy felt on her new album to the move and her engagement to Drew Snider, a renowned lacrosse player and coach. She’s back home after a string of sold-out intimate, acoustic shows in London, New York, Los Angeles and Melbourne.
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The gigs marked 10 years of her 2014 debut album, Goddess, and she performed the record in its entirety. It debuted at number 12 on the Billboard 200 and a year later landed her on tour with The Weeknd and Travis Scott. Since then, she’s released three more albums, evolving and elevating with each body of work. Looking back on Goddess, she says: “I sing for who I want to be in the future, and I definitely was thinking about someone who I wanted to become. I think that girl would be pretty proud of where I’m at now. As much as it gives empowerment to other people, sometimes I’m singing what I need to hear, too.”
On her earlier albums, there was a shyness and sometimes hopelessness that lurked under the surface. On Off with Her Head, Banks is supercharged, with rawness and strength in her voice. The track Stay (one of her favourite songs) shows a newfound self-assuredness in the lyrics, a willingness to admit fault and, in turn, be her most vulnerable. On lead single I Hate Your Ex-Girlfriend (which features Doechii), she is boldly confrontational and proudly unhinged – the first words we hear as this new chapter began were, “Set this bitch in motion, she’s emotional / I ain’t trying to make this conversational”. “There’s just a different power that I’m carrying now that I wanted to have before, but I hadn’t cracked the code yet,” she says. “It’s been so fun.”
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Inspired by songwriters like Fiona Apple, Lauryn Hill, Tracy Chapman and Brandy, Banks developed her process in exactly the way one would expect: it was deeply intuitive. “I remember my first writing session. I had only been writing on my own on the keys for 10 years at that point. Somebody set up a session for me and [the producer] asked me, ‘What do you want to write about?’ I thought, ‘Uhh,’ because that’s not how I do it. I realised my process was very instinctive.” Banks began making music at 14 on a keyboard and would venture to open-mic nights in Los Angeles, where she’d sing with her back to the audience, brought on by terrible stage fright. Now, her live shows are fuelled by passion in the way she moves and sings with complete freedom and intention. In the studio, Banks says she’s now a lot more confident.
“I know what I want and I know how to do it, better than before.” She co-produces all her music and writes impulsively. “I just keep writing. When it feels like I’ve said everything I want to, it’s not a conscious thought or feeling; it’s more subconscious and I don’t feel like writing any more. I can’t force inspiration and creativity. I just have to need to do it. At the end of making this new album, I knew when I was done simply because I didn’t want to write any more.” Her collaborators are people who inspire her and have been there since the beginning. British producers Lil Silva (who worked on Goddess), Sohn and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs all have credits on Off with Her Head. “It was like a reunion of some sort for me. After so much growth, coming back together with these people, even though we’ve all changed and there’s probably a different dynamic in the studio than there was before, it’s been important to me.”
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Creatively, Banks has shed layers. She admits to struggling with her body image in the early years of her career but has reached a point where she has a new perspective of those things. In other words, she’s grown up. “I’ve never really spoken about it,” she says, “because I feel like in this business, when women speak about it, people focus on it more. I don’t think I know one woman in this business especially, but also just in general, who hasn’t struggled immensely with body image at some point in her life. It’s so sad to me, but I think it’s just one of the journeys we are up against at this point in time. That was a big journey for me, letting go of certain things and allowing myself to be free.” That freedom can be heard in the new music, that sense of unchaining herself from limiting beliefs, and a release is heard in her voice, which soars to new heights. It’s also evident in her visuals, which are staying true to the Banks DNA (wicked, dark, romantic), but feel more experimental and playful.
“I think, for example, the I Hate Your Ex Girlfriend visual unlocked a new feeling for me. I don’t have certain things weighing on my mind like I used to that would take away my creativity. It’s a lot more fun now.” Her style has matured from a gothic, obscured mysteriousness into a lighter glamorousness that transforms depending on her music and mood. “When I make a song like I Hate Your Ex Girlfriend, I want to feel like a badass bitch, so my style for that visual reflected that. But if I were to do a visual for Stay or Best Friends [another track on the album], they would have a very different energy. It’s important for artists to write in all the layers of who they are, not just tap into one part, like jealousy or anger or sadness or sexiness. I think it’s boring when albums come from one perspective or have one mood. I would much rather get to know a full person and no one is just one thing.”
from left: dress, earring and ring by DIOR and playsuit and D-Journey bag by DIOR
It’s an insight she has purposely applied to Off with Her Head, which as a result is the most multi-faceted Banks project so far, a deep dive into her psyche, discovering and uncovering her complexities through her most honest songwriting yet.
Working with and empowering women is important to her. The album’s lead single features one of the hottest artists in the world right now: Florida rapper Doechii. The artist says she’s been a fan of Goddess for years and told journalist the Alexis Joy that working with Banks was “a full-circle moment, a big moment in my career”. “I think art comes from the same place in both Doechii and me,” says Banks. “For the video shoot we just threw ourselves into it and had fun. It’s cool to meet other females doing this. It’s a crazy world, this career is insane, and it’s hard to relate to if you’re not in it. So I think it’s very nice when women come together and are able to bond in that way.” Other artists that Banks admires include Rosalía, the Texan psychedelic trio Khruangbin and album collaborators such as the French singer Yseult and our very own Sampha. When looking at the industry as a whole, Banks would like to see more female musicians on their own production credits.
dress, belt, earring, rings and Optical-D boots by DIOR
dress, belt and earring by DIOR
“A lot of the time a [male] producer is in the room and even if the song was completely written before he adds anything [to the sound], he immediately gets his name on it as a writer, but it’s not like that the other way around. When I started producing myself and engineering myself, I noticed that the most and it made me so frustrated. I think if you write your own song and you’re working next to a producer and guiding the production, then you should have a production credit. And of course there needs to be a reworking of how we are compensated, specifically songwriters.”
With the Goddess shows done and Off with Her Head, her best work yet, having dropped in late February, Banks is in a state of celebration and ready to reflect on the past decade. She’s at peace with what she’s created and immensely proud of it. “I’m just more fully myself. I’ve got more strength within me.
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Channelling the wise woman that lives inside me is easier now. I have less self-doubt. My partner has also been really good for me, he’s brought a lightness into my life and he doesn’t take things too seriously.” When thinking about the twentysomething woman who released Goddess in 2014, she says her growth has naturally come through mistakes. “The only way to learn is through [making] a lot of mistakes, perhaps not having the right people on your team and finding your way out of tough situations. You get stronger as life goes on. You have to dig through the mud in order to overcome complexities. There are certain, serious, deep anxieties that I dealt with during Goddess that I’ve worked so hard to overcome. But now I truly do feel like I’m in the best place I’ve ever been in my life.”
Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 74 – MUSIC, TALENT, CREATIVE – on newsstands March 18. Pre-order your copy here.
SONG OF THE SUBURBS
Photographer DANIELLE LEVITT
Fashion Editor HARPER SLATE
Talent BANKS
Text ROXY LOLA
Hair JOERI ROUFFA at The Wall Group
Make-up ZAHEER SUKHNANDAN
Set designer BRYN BOWEN at Jones Management
Digital operator JAMES ARMAS
Photographer’s assistants BRYAN LYNN and SEPEHR ZAMANI
Fashion assistants COLE NORTON and GEORGIA EDWARDS
Production ZAC APOSTOLOU and SONYA MAZURYK
Production assistant BRIANNA CHRISTIE
Special thanks to CARL FYSH, CLAIRE COULTON and ETHAN BEER at Satellite414, BENNY TARANTINI, MICHELLE NEMEROFF, NIC DAMASIO and Outcast Studio
On the cover Banks wears DIOR
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