FEATURE:
Spotlight
PHOTO CREDIT: Sophie Webster for NOTION
who many might know from her acting work. Asha Banks is a St Albans-born talent who began her career as a child actress in the West End. She played the lead role in the 2022 film, The Magic Flute, and appeared in the 2024 BBC series, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. Banks’s debut E.P., Unite My Tongue, was released in March. This is someone who I think you should all follow. In terms of Asha Bank’s style and type of music, maybe Dream/Soft Pop. It is very much her own blend. I love her debut E.P. and I can tell she has huge passion for music. I know she will enjoy a long career. I want to get to a few recent interviews with Banks, where she talks about her music. Like I say with every artist who also is an actor, I think the disciplines from that feed into the music. They bring those skills and attributes into their songs. A certain ability and intuition that gives the music this distinct power and conviction. Maybe I am wrong, but you can see how music and acting natural intertwine. In March, Asha Banks spoke with NOTION about starring in My Fault: London and releasing her debut E.P. It is interesting in the interview how she says she wants to act and sing. How she also wants to go into musical theatre. Someone who will grace the stage plenty of times in musicals and big productions:
“It’s foggy in LA, but Asha Banks is feeling bright and sunny. “I’m just so, so happy… I feel full.” She’s had a busy month: My Fault: London, her new film, was quickly followed by Untie My Tongue, her first EP.
The latter is full of songs exploring heartbreak and the end of the relationship “from its early stages to its ending stages”, encompassing a wide range of feelings. On ‘Shiver’, Asha asks an ex-lover, “Do you think about me as much as I think about you?”, while ‘Closing Time’ sees her contrasting the “sugar rush” beginning of a relationship with the realisation that “only one of us knows it’s closing time”. Fundamentally, the EP is about truth: telling it, asking for it, attempting to figure it out. “They felt like pivotal moments in a relationship,” Asha says now, “It was about telling a story.”
Having acted from a young age after being cast as young Eponine in the West End production of Les Misérables, Asha Banks is accustomed to telling other people’s stories, other people’s truths. What was it like to speak for herself, this time? “With acting, you’re bringing to life somebody else’s creative vision, which is beautiful and which I love doing. But it was really exciting and a different venture to kind of tell my own story. It’s daunting, but it’s also so exciting to me.” As the title of the EP implies, this is Asha’s moment to speak.
Songwriting, in fact, has long been a part of how she expresses herself. “I wrote my first song when I was six. My mum says it was called ‘Mummy Is My Darling’,” she laughs, “I loved writing songs about my family members and how much I love them. I think the next one was like, a song about my grandma.” She’s always been dependent on music, “in an emotional way”. “You can materialise something that’s happening inside you. That process really helps me. And it also resonates with other people, it can allow them to realise something about themselves.” With two shows at Omeara in London coming up, she’s excited to see those feelings reflected back at her on the faces of her audience: “I feel like I’ve met so many of my fans online, so it’s going to be so surreal to smile at people and give everybody hugs.”
Growing up, she was drawn to her parents’ favourite music – Joni Mitchell and Nora Jones from her mum, Jack Johnson from her dad – and she feels the influence, even now, of that confessional strain of writing. “There was this initial fear of being vulnerable, and the need to be very transparent, but once you let it out, it becomes beautiful.” Genre, too, is something she’s comfortable exploring without being boxed in by it. “It was about finding something that felt really true,” she says, “When we were writing the EP, we were trying not to think too much about the exterior world… we just wanted it to sound right, emotionally.”
In writing so transparently about her real life, does she ever feel too exposed? “I feel like you’re kind of just forced to be completely honest, whether you want to be or not, because you have to just get over the fact that people are going to listen to it. Otherwise it’s not going to hit the same. The songs that everybody loves are the ones that are truthful.” And, she says, music gives her an outlet to feelings and experiences she wouldn’t otherwise know how to handle: “If I couldn’t write about everything that happens, it would probably swallow me whole.”
She is, however, also inspired by things that haven’t happened to her. ‘Feel the Rush’, another track on the EP, is written from the perspective of Noah, her character in My Fault: London. “It was a different approach. I hadn’t written about an experience that isn’t my own before. I wrote the song literally five days after I finished filming, so I was still very much in Noah mode. I know the character so well and it was a lovely way to [get] closure and finish the circle.”
There are a couple of other interviews I want to bring in. Back in February, Square Mile spent time with Asha Banks. This is someone who wants to do it all. In addition to this burgeoning and brilliant acting career, you can tell how much music means! In terms of how naturally it comes. I do think that we will see a string of albums from Banks. Unite My Tongue is a fantastic E.P. and a tantalising taste of this distinct and accomplished young songwriter:
“There’s another feather in Asha’s rather large cap: her songwriting. “Music is always my escape,” she tells me. She’s been making up songs since she was about six. Her repertoire has expanded from thirty-second songs about how much she loves her dog to her upcoming EP.
After a long day on a TV set, she’ll retreat to her bedroom and get writing. There are two guitars propped up by her desk, ready to go. Straight after filming My Fault: London wrapped, Asha recorded the six songs for Untie My Tongue. The first tracks ‘So Green’ and ‘Feel The Rush’ are already out. The remainder start streaming on 7 March. It’s already shaping up to be quite the year for Asha Banks.
Asha’s parents raised her on Joni Mitchell and Norah Jones. She’s always been drawn to guitar-led, writing-driven music, like Lizzy McAlpine and Bon Iver. Asha categorises her own sound as “indie folk slash pop. Music that feels earthy and folky and summery and floaty.” The bridge of ‘Feel The Rush’ layers up Asha’s vocals to create an ethereal, glittering sound. ‘So Green’ racked up 100,000 streams on Spotify within the first two months.
The real joy for Asha isn’t just watching the numbers go up and up, but being able to share her music with other people. She performed these songs live for the first time at Shoreditch Treehouse in December, and hopes to do many more shows around London. “Given my background in theatre, I crave the performance. Because it’s live, it evolves every time and you get to live with it for ages.” Watch this space.
It’s impossible for Asha to pinpoint which form of creativity calls to her the most. She can’t pick between theatre and film, or even acting and singing. She wants to do everything – and no doubt she will. “I’d love to do loads of different roles and play loads of different sort of characters and try loads of different things and different styles and different mediums. I really just love doing it all”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Rankin
As Asha Banks revealed to HUNGER, she is working on a new E.P. Her sophomore release, How Real Was It?, is out in November. I am excited to hear that. Infused with and influenced by Los Angeles, it might be a sunnier and bigger release than Unite My Tongue. Two E.P.s in a year shows how focused and prolific Asha Banks is as a songwriter:
“Ciarán Howley: Where to start? Let’s go back to the beginning — who were your biggest musical influences growing up?
Asha Banks: I’ve kind of realised recently that so much of my music taste just came from my parents. My dad was always playing Take That in the car, and my Mum loved Norah Jones, Joni Mitchell and Janis Ian. I didn’t really choose to listen to those artists, but they absolutely influenced me. And Jack Johnson — such a dad artist, right? I do wonder, like, if they’d been heavy-metal heads, my
career would probably have been completely different.
CH: 2025 is a big year for you — your debut EP Untie My Tongue arrived at the start and How Real Was It? lands in November. How does it feel to put out such raw, vulnerable work — and so much of it?
AB: It’s definitely a mix of daunting and exciting. The first time I released something, it was terrifying — it was mine, and then suddenly it was everyone else’s. But seeing how people connect with my songs is just the best part. I’ve played a lot of these songs live already, so I’ve had a glimpse of what people like, but hearing it all fully produced is such a different thing.
CH: What can we expect from the new EP? Is it a complete sonic departure or more of a natural progression from the first?
AB: How Real Was It? is definitely a natural progression. If the first EP was very present and in- the-moment, this one feels more reflective. Some of the songs I wrote at the same time as the first EP, and some I wrote in LA, which was my first time writing there. Just being in the sun made a massive difference — like, I swear it infiltrates the music. So a few songs have this sunnier feel, but it’s still rooted in my sound.
CH: So, what’s next for Asha Banks?
AB: I’ve got a headline show coming up at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in September, which I’m so excited for. My brother did shows there as a kid, and I was always jealous. Now I’ve finally put myself on that stage. And I’m in LA right now finishing the How Real Was It? EP and doing more writing. I’m also going on tour later this year. So, yeah — lots happening”.
I will leave it there. I was hoping to find a few reviews for Unite My Tongue. It deserved a lot more press and attention! However, when How Real Was It? is released in November, there should be some reviews up. This is an artist and actor who has big ambitions and you can see embarking on world tours and collaborations with huge artists. For now, she is looking ahead to the release of her second E.P. Banks has a couple of international dates before the end of this year and some great U.K. gigs scheduled for next year. Although she sounded so full-formed and brilliant right now, the truth is that she is…
ONLY just getting started.
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