"I Am The Purest Form Of Myself On Stage": An Interview With BANKS

By: Tamara Roper

A vision in monochrome, BANKS is thoughtful as she picks her way through interview questions with wavering certainty. It's a gloomy November day, and MTV is interviewing the elusive popstress against an equally as gloomy backdrop, but as we look onto a car park drowning in slate great sky, BANKS reveals she's rather a fan of the weather.

“I love grey. My mom told me that when I was younger I would get mildly depressed when it was grey all the time. I’d be darker when it was dark out. But, as an adult I really love it.”

It’s a fitting acquiescence for the woman who has managed to turn songs about melancholia into a career. Jillian Banks, a dark elf from the City of Angels, has become a master in the art of sombre R’n’B. Turning old diary entries into musical tales of heartbreak, her debut album, Goddess, became one of the most anticipated albums of 2014.

Informed by ill-fated princess Aaliyah and mastered by bright star Brit producers like Jamie Woon and Lil Silva, she found herself on the hit-list of last year’s tastemakers, and ended up on the BBC Sound Of 2014 and MTV’s own Brand New For 2014 list.

Back in the middle of last year, BANKS was still a relative unknown. Reluctant to do press and notoriously private, an active social media presence was replaced by a personal phone number on her Facebook page. Talking to fans is “one of her favourite parts… physically touching someone who connects to your music, it’s like connecting with the biggest part of you”.

Eighteen months later and BANKS is structured lines and couture, a fledged pop star. “I feel like a more developed version of me from a year ago. When you broaden the little box that you’ve been living in for so long, it can be very uncomfortable at first.”

Now the one time face of Chanel and Coach, BANKS is no longer the “very, very, very private person” of last year. A successful tour with The Weeknd (where she was “thrown in at the deep end”) and critical success has resulted in a veritable rebirth.

BANKS credits London as a main part of her success. “It’s kind of where I started. I had a month in London, about a year and a half ago, when I had a breakthrough artistically and personally, as an adult woman.” On stage in Brixton she is emotional, close to tears in her thanks to the crowd who've helped her fill theatres she visited as a child. BANKS is “the purest form” of herself on stage: "you have to tune out all of the smoke and the foggy mirrors. All of a sudden there is an atmosphere, and it is your music.”