Asha Banks

Metropolis presents Asha Banks Plus Special Guests Age restrictions: 14+ When Asha Banks was entering her teenage years, she poured her emotions into a song titled ‘You’, in which she declared her undivided love for a special someone. “Who gave me the right to be so deep when I was 13?” she says. “I definitely hadn't had any experience of that at all!” She may look back at her earnestness and laugh, but it was the first song she remembers being proud of. “I've always been a storyteller since I was a kid,” she shares. The 20-year-old Hertfordshire-born singer and actor started writing love songs when she was six and hasn’t stopped telling stories since. Throughout her childhood she performed in major West End productions including Les Misérables and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, going on to appear in screen roles like 2022 musical fantasy film The Magic Flute and the BBC adaptation of A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder, all while quietly honing her songwriting craft behind-the-scenes and in her trailers between filming. After spending the past few years getting her music fix by sharing reimagined acoustic covers of songs online by artists like Gigi Perez, Frank Ocean and Daughter, she’s finally ready to release her own material. Displaying the emotional vulnerability of fellow Gen-Z singers like Clairo, Gracie Abrams and Lizzy McAlpine, Asha’s diaristic approach to songwriting and beautifully unguarded vocals make her an exciting new voice in British folk-pop.  With her debut EP ‘Untie My Tongue’ it’s a chance to invite fans in to experience a previously unseen side of her artistry. “This EP is an introduction to me, how I write and my storytelling,” she shares. “It does feel like a story from start to finish.” Growing up in St Albans, Asha spent most of her Sundays at performing arts classes where she could practice her triple-threat offerings of singing, acting and dancing all under one roof. She could also often be found singing at her parents’ local pub – the oldest one in Britain, at that – where she took guitar lessons when it doubled up as a music school in the evenings. She was educated in rock ‘n’ roll classics by Johnny Cash, AC/DC, Joan Jett and more, jumping at the chance to perform at the boozer’s open mic nights. “There's loads of videos of me as a kid singing these hilariously too-old-for-me rock songs, but that's where my first live performance with music started,” she recalls. Asha quickly got the songwriting bug and would write lyrics in her bedroom for any and every family member who would listen, while soaking up her parents' favourite artists around the house like Joni Mitchell, Norah Jones and Dido. She eventually landed an audition for Les Misérables through her Sunday theatre class and was cast as a young Éponine at the Queen's Theatre in 2012, aged just seven. “From there, I became completely obsessed with theatre because it was a way to sing and perform on a stage – it was just mind-blowing,” she shares. The momentum continued as she went on to be cast in stage shows like 1984, Annie, Spring Awakening and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, in which she played Violet Beauregarde. But it was performing in 2019’s The Boy in the Dress – which featured original music by Robbie Williams and close collaborator Guy Chambers – that had the biggest influence on her solo ambitions. “My first experience in a recording studio was going to Guy’s Sleeper Sounds studios and recording some of the demo tracks. I remember walking in and just being mesmerised,” she shares. “After watching Guy, knowing what a prolific songwriter he is and being in the studio with him, I think I went away from that being like, ‘I want to properly write songs.’I wrote one on the tube home, I was so inspired!” In recent years her career has jumped from the stage to the screen, including featuring in The Magic Flute (Jack Wolfe, Iwan Rheon, Greg Wise) based on the famous Mozart opera. But playing the sharp and witty Cara Ward in 2024’s acclaimed A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder mystery series marked her biggest role to date. Her next project is a starring role in the enemies-to-lovers drama My Fault: London, out early 2025, which helped set her up nicely when it came to writing the EP. “Being able to come into a character and have their life perspective was really interesting when I came out of that,” she says. “It just gives me more emotions to play with.”  Almost immediately after filming wrapped, Asha dived straight back into songwriting and penned the stirring ‘Feel The Rush’, which features in the new movie’s credits. First single ‘So Green’ followed shortly after, and the project started to take shape in earnest. “That felt like an important moment,” she recalls. “It felt like I’d finally found a sound that really worked for me, that resonated.” The project’s earthy sonic textures blend acoustic guitars, mellow piano chords and muted percussions that pull Asha’s stripped back vocals into sharp focus – a state that she poetically describes as feeling like “being in a forest” – making for a portrait that is a nostalgic, melancholic and hopeful all at once. ‘Untie My Tongue’ charts an honest course through the universal moments that everyone experiences in a relationship. That path unwinds with the gentle guitar strums of ‘So Green’, on which Asha admits to being equal parts excited and terrified at the prospect of falling for someone. “Limbs alive and intertwining, lay me in the dirt / Let these roots grow, While we both know how much this could hurt,” she sings in cautiously hushed tones. ‘Feel The Rush’ then finds the singer dizzy in the honeymoon phase headrush, feeling the “excitement and all the fun stuff to every extent”. The trickling piano chords of ‘Freeze’ soon signal a turning point where things start to sour, as she pleads: “Hold me for a while, wrap me up in the sheets and we’ll be quiet / ‘cause if I state the obvious it’s obvious you and me have expired.” “It’s about that internal panic of what that is, and wanting to stop time and live in the happiness whilst it lasts,” Asha explains. Elsewhere, she explores things from a flipped perspective (‘Closing Time’), comes to terms with her reality (‘Silverlines’) and resolves to not let the past back in (‘Shiver’). “I hope that resonates with other people,” she shares. Working on the record in East London from March to October 2024, collaboration was an important element in bringing her debut EP to life. She worked closely with producer Josh Bruce Williams (Liza Anne, Dave, David Kushner), who was pivotal in finding the intimate folk sound that “rang true” with the singer. She also co-wrote alongside Benjamin Francis Leftwich (The 1975, Holly Humberstone, CMAT), Ryan Linvill (Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, Dermot Kennedy) and Olivia Broadfield – whose music can be heard in shows like Grey's Anatomy and The Vampire Diaries. “Being able to write with Olivia opened me up,” Asha explains. “I feel like there’s not many female writers and producers, and she was somebody that I really clicked with immediately. I was able to be so honest and vulnerable with her.” As Asha prepares to share her own words with the world for the first time – while looking forward to eventually doing her own live shows, too – the experience has only reaffirmed the synergy of her passions. “I love both acting and music so much, I just can’t see a world where I’m not doing both,” she says. “I'm excited to hear people's reactions and see where that takes me for the next section of writing.” ‘Untie My Tongue’ is only the first leg of the journey Asha plans to take listeners on. “Every song feels like the tip of the iceberg of the emotional moment,” she says. “The songs that stuck out were the ones that were the most honest and truthful for that period of time. When I listen to this, I can see the episode that I was in, the chapter that I was having in that moment. I think that's why I love it so much.”