from TENSION to confrontation: inside ‘everything is about you’
‘Everything Is About You’, a three-track collaboration between Asha Banks, Novo Amor, and Lowswimmer, opens with an introspective guitar line, immediately establishing an understated, stripped-back and reflective tone. With Banks as the main vocalist, her dreamy delivery carries the narrative across all three tracks. The project traces a clear progression, exploring emotional dependence and imbalances, and ultimately the decision to step away from something that no longer serves you. The project’s stripped-back production creates an intimate, almost confessional atmosphere. As a listener, you're placed within Banks’ inner world, all while retaining the signature sound of Novo Amor and Lowswimmer. In the expected style of all three artists, the project is devastatingly beautiful.
The opener of the project, ‘Anymore’, sets the emotional tone instantly, capturing a sense of dependence that underpins the narrative and drives the song’s central tension. The lyricism explores detachment, though never fully reaching separation. This is reflected in the tension surrounding communication, particularly in lines like “Can we not talk it out”, where Banks’ phrasing carries a frustrated desire for resolution, driven by a fear of losing not just the relationship, but her sense of self within it. This hesitation is further deepened by the suggestion that her identity is intrinsically tied to this relationship. Lines like “I don’t know me without you” play a striking role, a sobering reminder that Banks defines herself through it – implying that, in losing her lover, she risks losing herself entirely. Throughout the track, Banks sings lines like “I don’t want to hear/see it anymore”, emphasising her aversion to confronting the emotional complexity of the relationship, instead reinforcing her pattern of avoidance. The repeated line “everything is about you” sits at the core of the track, reflecting a dependence where maintaining the relationship takes priority over its health, linking directly to her urge to “talk it out” as a means of holding onto both her partner and her sense of self. There’s a constant push and pull within the track, where Banks expresses a desire to detach while simultaneously clinging to the relationship, reinforcing the emotional tension that drives the song.
This lingering dependence carries into the next track, ‘Lie For Me’, which emerges as the project’s standout, where avoidance gives way to something more deliberate. Rather than passively avoiding reality, Banks begins to actively sustain something false. The instrumental itself is floaty, and when paired with lines like “head in the clouds / dreaming / too comfortable / too casual” it foregrounds a passive and ungrounded connection rather than a real one, with the relationship existing in a dream-state rather than reality. Even describing herself as “too comfortable”, Banks suggests a lack of genuine stability, implying that this sense of emotional security is ultimately artificial. Despite this, Banks makes it clear that she is aware of the fragility of this dream-like state through which she perceives the relationship. The line “What if everything changes when I wake up?” suggests that she knows this situation is unstable with the illusion positioned as temporary rather than secure. The idea of needing to “wake up” reinforces this dream-state, highlighting an inevitable return to reality and a fear of what might change, or be lost, when that happens. This sense of instability is highlighted through a mutual participation in the illusion. The line “pretending’s contagious” suggests that both individuals within the relationship are complicit, their dishonesty becoming shared and self-perpetuating as they co-create something increasingly detached from reality.
The core of ‘Lie For Me’ is encapsulated in the titular lyric “Tell a lie for me”, where Banks directly and explicitly requests dishonesty, wanting her lover to “say you want it / say you need it”. By prioritising reassurance over the truth, Banks descends further into a cycle of instability and self-aware dishonesty, using illusion to maintain a dwindling relationship. Her request for dishonesty becomes a means of emotional survival, as truth is something no longer desirable to her, or something that she is willing to confront. Not only this, but the end of this relationship is clearly something that is too much to even acknowledge, as shown through lines like “Nothing ends with a maybe / So don’t say the word”. It’s at this moment that Banks’ fear of uncertainty becomes explicit, choosing to instead attempt to control the outcome of this relationship through avoidance rather than addressing the tension. The instability this creates is tangible, as demonstrated in lines like “waiting for you to tell me when it’s done”. Her lack of agency is emphasised as she chooses falsehood and silence, rather than having agency over her own closure. She instead shifts responsibility to her partner, choosing to revel in the ambiguity of the relationship, falsehoods and empty reassurances, rather than accepting, or initiating, its end.
If ‘Anymore’ is defined by emotional tension, ‘Lie For Me’ marks the shift toward the active distortion of reality, creating a dream-state of idealisation and false reassurances. As the track comes to a close, and the project moves onto the third and final song, this illusion begins to fracture, giving way to the confrontation that inevitably unfolds in ‘Hear Me Out’.
Opening with “Couldn’t handle it / I’m unravelling”, Banks immediately signals the inevitable collapse of the illusion constructed across the first two tracks, as it becomes emotionally unsustainable. The song itself manifests through production as both an emotional ballad and yet something fractured all at once – pauses after certain lines that feel as if Banks is confronting her partner in real time, thinking through her words. Continuing with the lines “Codependency / Recipe for hell”, Banks makes it clear that she now understands what was happening across this relationship, and she’s come to the realisation that it cannot continue like this.
That shift is reflected deeper in moments where Banks sings “Hear me out / I let you shout”, where she recognises that while she previously allowed her partner to dominate, it’s now time to finally assert her own voice, rather than staying in silence to maintain an unstable relationship like she did before. Banks’ masterful lyricism clarifies this shift in moments like “Truth is now / I’m done, I’m out”, directly contrasting her earlier plea to “tell a lie for me” as she moves from seeking reassurances in falsehood to confronting reality she has previously been so reluctant to face. Her desire for dishonesty is replaced by her desire for something truly better. This clarity extends into lines like “Not somebody who / gives their worst to you” and “taste your medicine”, where Banks rejects the previous version of herself that accepted and wanted the imbalance, instead asserting a stronger sense of self and subverting the dynamic that once defined their relationship. Banks’ newly asserted sense of self is reinforced in “I was good to you / I’m different this time around”, where Banks reflects on the imbalance of the past while asserting a clear shift in identity. She no longer feels that she “[doesn’t] know [herself] without you”, as expressed in the first track, but instead reclaims a sense of self beyond the relationship. Everything is no longer about them, but instead her new reinstated sense of self, and the closure she’s finally allowing herself to receive.
Ultimately, ‘Everything Is About You’ traces a progression from emotional tension to illusion, and finally to confrontation, as Banks moves from emotional dependence towards a clearer sense of self. What begins as a reluctance to face reality gradually unravels into something more direct and self-assured, as illusion gives way to truth and identity begins to be reclaimed. It’s a poignant piece of storytelling that captures the complexity of letting go, and the difficult process of choosing yourself.
Stream ‘Everything Is About You’ on all major streaming platforms now.
‘Everything Is About You’ Official cover artwork by Mitch Peryer.
Written by Caitlin Kennedy-Sheerin.