BANKS is back in the Genius studio to unpack the magic behind her timeless hit, “Waiting Game.” Originally the opening song on her 'London' EP and later featured on her debut album 'Goddess,' the SOHN produced track marked a turning point in her career and her life. On today’s episode of Verified, the singer-songwriter reflects on writing from an unjaded place, finding a partner who matches her fire, and how the meaning of the song has evolved with time!
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00Waiting Game in general, it's just such a special song and I still love performing it.
00:05I still find new meaning in it.
00:06The best songs are songs that I think throughout your life can change what they mean to you,
00:11but always mean something really dear to you.
00:13I'm so grateful.
00:14It has touched so many people and it's meant a lot to so many people and that is just like
00:20the best feeling in the world for a musician.
00:23When I wrote Waiting Game, it was my first trip I ever took for writing.
00:33No one had really heard my music yet.
00:36I think I had released one song.
00:38I had lived in LA all my life.
00:39I hadn't traveled that much.
00:41Just being in London on my own writing was so inspiring.
00:45It was the most invigorated and inspired I had felt ever.
00:50That trip I met and worked with some of the most important collaborators to me.
00:55That's where I was.
00:56I was wide-eyed and unjaded.
01:00Sometimes it feels like you're just riding a wave and you're really in the pocket.
01:04It almost feels like in those moments you're like a fortune teller because you can just
01:07tell something special is happening.
01:10That's kind of what I felt that trip.
01:20The way you make me feel all sexy but it's causing me shame.
01:34It was about wanting someone and wishing you didn't.
01:38Feeling ashamed of it.
01:39Knowing you shouldn't.
01:40Knowing it would hurt someone else.
01:42Knowing it was a messy situation.
01:50It's hard to ever be with someone else whose schedule is just as crazy as yours.
02:10But it's also amazing because they get it.
02:12For me what I've found is that in terms of who I love and am attracted to, I used to
02:21be like they have to be creative.
02:22And that's true.
02:23But you can be creative in so many different ways.
02:25It doesn't need to be a singer or a painter or a writer or whatever.
02:29There's creativity within every aspect of any job.
02:33And I think what for me is the most important is you have that fire in your belly.
02:37For me, I've got a fire in me that just feels big and that is attractive to me when other
02:43people have that.
02:53It's not like I'm a superstitious person, but it's almost like a mild form of OCD.
02:58When something is not like a perfectly clean slate, you think, oh it's cursed.
03:03I had never been in a situation like that before and so there was fear.
03:07And I did feel like, oh this is so messy.
03:10What if we're cursed because of how it started?
03:25You can't control your emotions.
03:26Life would be easier if you could.
03:28When you have intense feelings for someone and you wish you didn't because it's so messy,
03:31it's like, well why is it messy?
03:33You're thinking of X, Y, and Z.
03:34What's going to happen if you actually pursue this?
03:37At that time was a really scary thought because of all of the other things that would happen
03:41if that happened.
03:42I'm not trying to make it so dramatic, but when you love someone and you feel like you
03:46can't be with them, it feels all consuming.
03:49Waiting Game has been so important to me.
03:54It's one of the songs that really changed my life.
03:56I think it's one of the songs that a lot of people discovered me through.
04:00It was in a Victoria's Secret commercial and I remember that was like a way a lot of people
04:05discovered me.
04:06I just remember them walking with their wings and it was like .
04:11I'm so grateful for that moment in time of inspiration, that moment of creation because
04:16it did change my life for sure.