“I’m very moody, so I dress for whatever mood I’m in. Sometimes I want to be a little more boyish and flowy and comfortable. Sometimes I want to feel a little sexier and more composed.”
― Banks
“Being brave enough to just be unapologetic for who you are, that’s a goddess.”
― Banks
“There’s no separation between electronic music and acoustic music. It’s all one thing. Each song has its own heartbeat. Each song has its own soul.”
― Banks
“I make really good pasta sauce. The secret to getting it right is just patience and love.”
― Banks
“Femininity can be a powerful thing.”
― Banks
“My approach to beauty is all about moods. If you want to feel sexy, if you want to feel feminine or, I don’t know, boyish – it’s all about how you feel at that point in time. My mood changes.”
― Banks
“Human emotion is more interesting than anything. Everything that is so overtly sexual is not real. Real emotion is sexy. It’s vulnerable and raw.”
― Banks
“I like Australia, but every time I’m there, I feel like everybody’s being sarcastic because everyone’s so nice.”
― Banks
“I have freckles; I don’t like covering up too much. I like things dewy and natural, and I think that having moisture in your skin is really beautiful and youthful – sometimes that’s more important than coverage.”
― Banks
“If you meet me, you might not get to know me. If you hear my music? You’ll get to know me.”
― Banks
“I like wearing oils. Perfume makes me nauseous sometimes. It’s too strong.”
― Banks
“I feel like my dream animal would be a mermaid that could fly and also live in the trees. She has a nest, almost like a bird. She feeds her babies like a bird, like, chews the food first and then feeds it to them through her mouth.”
― Banks
“I like feeling fresh and having really dewy skin. I like feeling moisturized and having a good brow.”
― Banks
“I just think it looks so cool when a woman has a dirty martini. She looks so powerful.”
― Banks
“With ‘Someone New’, I was at my rawest, and I didn’t want to cover it up. And same with ‘You Should Know’ and ‘Under the Table.’ I wanted it to be the lyrics and the chord progressions, and the intricacies of the guitar of ‘Someone New’ are so delicate, sometimes that’s all you need.”
― Banks
“A wounded healer, I think, is a lot more powerful than a healer that has not been wounded. In ‘Weaker Girl,’ I was coming from a wounded healer’s perspective.”
― Banks
“Every artist is an artist, and every heartbeat is a heartbeat.”
― Banks
“It’s a big thing in my music to highlight being human – being emotional and powerful, like a goddess.”
― Banks
“Nothing I do is thought out or planned or premeditated. It’s just that I’m breathing and living! You just have to breathe and live.”
― Banks
“I grew up in L.A. I actually grew up in the Valley, which was a pretty amazing place to grow up because everybody has nice, big backyards, and I was kind of a little nature being.”
― Banks
“My voice has always been kind of distinct – even when I was four years old, my mom told me that people would be like, ‘Why does your daughter always sound like a chain smoker?’ I’ve always had this deep, raspy voice.”
― Banks
“It’s so inspiring to be around other people who have ideas you haven’t thought of, and all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Wow! That’s so amazing!’ I definitely want everything I do to just get better and better.”
― Banks
“I got into writing music when I was, like, 14 or 15. It was a very private thing for me because I used it as an outlet and emotional release. I kept it very close to myself and didn’t tell too many people about it.”
― Banks
“I’m very passionate, very emotional, very sensitive. I’ve always been like that.”
― Banks
“Once I discovered how important writing music was to me and just what a huge weight it lifted off of me, I knew that it was going to be the biggest part of my life, the biggest love of my life, the biggest thing in my life.”
― Banks
“I love Lauryn Hill, Tracy Chapman, Fiona Apple. People like that. People you can really connect to on the most basic human level.”
― Banks
“It’s a big theme throughout my music to just embrace everything about your own mind and to always feel powerful. It’s not just a feminine thing, but for men, too, whether they feel weak, or strong or crazy or reclusive. I want everyone to feel powerful no matter what little beasts they have in their head.”
― Banks
“I used to swallow people’s energies, and then I learned, as I got older, that I’m too sensitive, and I had to stop doing that. Now I don’t take as much in.”
― Banks
“I know every line to ‘The Little Rascals.’”
― Banks
“I have a very feminine voice when I write, a very womanly point of view. My last name feels strong and powerful. To me, it’s almost a bit masculine. I like the dichotomy of the two. Two sides perfectly represented within my name.”
― Banks
“I love fashion. I like dressing how I feel, and my music shows how I feel – they go hand in hand. My performance style is pretty much the same as my everyday style.”
― Banks
“I tend to wear all black. I like feeling sexy, feminine, effortless, and real.”
― Banks
“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.”
― Banks
“When you broaden the little box that you’ve been living in for so long, it can be very uncomfortable at first.”
― Banks
“I’ve never really been into social media – I don’t have a Facebook; I don’t do Twitter or Instagram or anything.”
― Banks
“When I’m writing, it’s the weirdest thing: it’s not even a conscious process. I’m not even thinking when I write, and then all of a sudden, I’ll have a song that makes me feel so much better than I did before.”
― Banks
“Music is almost like a therapy for me. It helps keep me centered and think straight. Before I discovered it, I was walking around, and it felt like there were 25 extra pounds of gravity on my shoulders. It’s like you’re mute or something.”
― Banks
“My music is the most ‘me’ thing about me. Everything is in my music.”
― Banks
“I really believe that if you want something bad enough, and you work so hard to get it, and you have it inside, then if you just never stop, it’s gonna happen.”
― Banks
“It’s that beautiful thing to love your weaknesses, your insecurities, and then put them all on blast. That’s why I started writing, and that’s why it was so hard to do it in public.”
― Banks
“I got a psychology degree from USC, but music is just my whole life.”
― Banks
“Sometimes I see through things when people are talking. I’m really sensitive to other people, so I can tell if somebody’s putting on a front.”
― Banks
“I’m from L.A., but everyone thinks that I’m British.”
― Banks
“I always say my music is like dark blue or black, like a punch to your gut that feels really good.”
― Banks
“When I’m in show mode, I can’t even think about putting on makeup; I just have to be centered.”
― Banks
“I never judge my own songwriting. It’s just my heart. What’s there to judge about your own heart?”
― Banks
“Me in my music and onstage – that’s me without any fears of judgement; that’s me when I’m shining.”
― Banks
“It’s funny because everyone says, ‘Oh you’re reclusive; you don’t do social media,’ but it’s not about being reclusive. I like direct contact, and I like contact that’s purposeful.”
― Banks
“A lot of times, people are ashamed of feeling weak and being rejected – so it’s liberating to be able to sing about those things. And it’s amazing when other people don’t feel alone because they hear it.”
― Banks
“My parents are divorced, and seeing that was really painful for me. Really painful for me. But that’s also a big part of why I’m intrigued by the dynamics between people – because I was close to something that fell apart.”
― Banks
“People think I’m going to be this really dark human when they meet me.”
― Banks
“I don’t think of anyone as a ‘groupie.’ People who connect with my music are just inspiring and amazing.”
― Banks
“I like rap. I like anything with soul. I like anything you can feel, anything that makes you think that the artist had to make that song, or they were going to go crazy.”
― Banks
“I feel more comfortable being confrontational and authoritative. It’s important for women in this business.”
― Banks
“Making music is an emotional thing. And when you’re on a video shoot with 50 people there, you have to somehow, in a non-emotional way, say what you want and not feel guilty for it. And that takes growing up and that takes… not caring how people perceive you as much. And it just takes experience, I think.”
― Banks
“I get so many questions in interviews about feminism, and I think the second you start separating femininity and masculinity and giving one more power than the other, that’s like – everyone is a person.”
― Banks
“My music is inspired by my life: the people in my life, the people I have relationships with, the people I love, the people that make me feel something.”
― Banks
“There are definitely a lot of creative people I want to work with. I wanna work with Drake!”
― Banks
“I think social media is an interesting beast – you can’t get too caught up in it. People can get caught up in it sometimes, but I think it’s important to live in the present and not on the computer screen.”
― Banks
“Fashion is a huge part of music and of who you are. It really sets the mood for a show, and it’s fun to play around with it. You can get really creative in photo shoots as well. You know, just having fun with it.”
― Banks
“The song ‘Stick’? That needed to be chunky and sexy. It’s human. It’s human to be the girl in ‘Stick’ and feel spicy as heck.”
― Banks
“L.A. is a really good home base. I’ve grown up here, and so sometimes I have wanderlust even though I tour. You think it would be cured by touring, but sometimes I feel like I want to be somewhere else.”
― Banks
“My identity started developing through the songs I was writing.”
― Banks
“Social media overwhelms me.”
― Banks
“My music is 100-percent me, so it’s just who I developed into as a woman. I feel really grateful that I waited until I did because I feel like I really found who I was by doing that.”
― Banks
“I listened to pretty much anything that I could really feel, where I felt like the artist had to write those songs, where you can feel their soul and the pain and the happiness and love and everything.”
― Banks
“I think doing things that scare you a little is a good thing. A little bit of fear is never a bad thing. A healthy amount of fear makes everything taste better.”
― Banks
“On tour, there’s dry shampoo – I use the one by Bed Head.”
― Banks
“I like a kind of dark, bronze-y brown smoky eye with maybe some mascara, some contouring and stuff, but I don’t like wearing black or pinks. I like it more tonal.”
― Banks
“I definitely drink lots of water. I use this Decleor Neroli Oil to moisturize – no matter what the climate is, it always makes my skin really moist.”
― Banks
“I found music when I was very dark. I felt unheard, with inner dialogues that I didn’t know how to express.”
― Banks
“James Blake, Jai Paul, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Sohn, Kwabs, Sampha, Lil Silva, and Brandy, always. They all have soul. Deep soul.”
― Banks
“I found music because I felt different.”
― Banks
“I have a really feminine voice, but I also feel quite powerful when I write. So my songs feel heavy, and that’s how Banks sounds. It’s a really short, powerful sound. It almost sounds masculine, and I like having that dichotomy.”
― Banks
“I have a memory of listening to Tracy Chapman and just being intrigued by her voice. Even as a young girl, I wanted to know more about her and her story. I felt I was learning about her through her music. That was a revelation to me.”
― Banks
“It’s a powerful thing to be able to write a song. Even the least powerful feeling – like insecurity – that makes you feel weak when you experience it, when you write about it, you are powerful.”
― Banks
“The most personal thing about me is my music. The most honest, pure thing in my whole life.”
― Banks
“One of my favorite things is to try delicious different fruits from different places, in Japan or other places that have different fruits you can’t get in the States.”
― Banks
“When I do things that don’t feel pure or make any moves that I don’t feel like represent me or who I am, it makes me feel like I wanna throw up. So I just do me, and I guess people just take that how they do.”
― Banks
“’Before I Ever Met You’ was the first one to come out and that just dives into the grit, and it’s pretty graphic about a relationship. For my first song, it was very special the way it happened, because I didn’t really hold anything back, and people responded to it.”
― Banks
“It feels really good that people are connecting to my music so much.”
― Banks
“Once I discovered music and that you don’t need to just use words but can add a growl to the melody, that releases so much more. I never want to make music for any other reason.”
― Banks
“Every human is so layered. And ‘Brain,’ that theme is about – I’m just such a sensitive person, and I can pick up people’s energies.”
― Banks
“I think every person is so unique. I think every woman is so unique, every man is so unique, every artist is so unique.”
― Banks
“Music is the most private place in my life, but it’s become the most public part of who I am.”
― Banks
“Real pain hurts so bad. When you’ve gone through something and you’ve overcome it, you’re able to heal other people.”
― Banks
“I’ve felt real pain, and sometimes I channel the exhale coming out of that to write, and those are the songs that give me the most power and the most strength.”
― Banks
“I want people to feel the times where they don’t feel good. You should dive into those emotions, because that’s what I do with my music.”
― Banks
“Twitter and those platforms just didn’t feel natural to me.”
― Banks
“What people would qualify as R&B is, for me, just soul. And I love honesty and soul and heavy, crunchy beats that move you and make you breathe a little bit faster.”
― Banks
“Growing up, I listened to a lot of everything – I fell in love with music, when I discovered people like Lauryn Hill and Tracy Chapman, people whose voices I could really feel, people with a lot of soul. That’s what I’m drawn to as a musician: Anybody that has their own voice and their own point of view.”
― Banks
“I think, probably when I was 15 or so, I was going through a really hard time with my family, and I just felt really helpless – I didn’t know how to put anything I was feeling into words, and I was really confused, and I felt like nobody would hear me, but I didn’t even know what to say.”
― Banks
“I haven’t even had to learn, but it’s just this natural thing to be able to express any emotion I have through the tone of my voice.”
― Banks
“I’m just gonna keep growing as an artist, and I’m excited to work with different people and learn from all these other talented, creative people that I’ve been around. It’s so inspiring to be around other people who have ideas you haven’t thought of, and all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Wow! That’s so amazing!’”
― Banks
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