We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Victoria `Banks a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Victoria, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

It’s a constant, necessary adaptation to earn a living as a songwriter. Royalty rates have changed so much with the advent of streaming services that a song that used to earn $70,000 with a million record sales now earns $1200 with a million streams. I spent more money to go to the Grammy awards this year than I earned on the record I was nominated for. As a result, I’ve explored many other ways to use my songwriting skills. I teach songwriting seminars, I teach college classes, I perform at paying songwriter venues, and I work as a corporate consultant to help Fortune 500 organizations brand themselves, develop psychologically safe collaborative spaces, and build a more cohesive team through group songwriting exercises. Every one of those avenues started through opportunities that were given to me by people in my network, and I didn’t feel qualified to do them at first. So there are 2 lessons I’ve learned from that. 1) Virtually every good thing that happens in your career happens through someone that you know, so don’t underestimate the importance of network. 2) Lean into trying things that scare you. Act as if you know what you’re doing until you can figure it out!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

In my 25 years as a songwriter on Nashville’s Music Row, I’ve has had songs recorded by over 100 artists. I co-wrote 4 songs on Mickey Guyton’s 2021 Grammy-nominated album Remember Her Name and 3 on her preceding Bridges EP, including “What Are You Gonna Tell Her”, which made history as the first original song performed by a Black woman on the 2020 ACM Awards. I solo-penned the ASCAP and SOCAN award-winning hits “Saints & Angels” by Sara Evans, Jessica Simpson’s Billboard record-breaking “Come on Over”, Johnny Reid’s “Dance With Me”, for which I was named Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) Songwriter of the Year in 2010. My TV and movie placements have included Breakthrough, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, Nashville, Monarch, and more. As an artist, I’ve released 4 Canadian-based albums and was named CCMA Female Artist of the Year in 2010, with nominations for 9 other CCMA awards including Producer of the Year.

I’m an Instructor of Songwriting at Belmont University, where I teach multiple commercial songwriting classes and am faculty advisor for the student group WEBelmont (Women in Entertainment). I have also established a thriving side-career as a corporate consultant using songwriting as a team-building, leadership and branding tool for over 50 organizations including L’Oreal, Amex, Pfizer, and Comcast. I co-host and engineer the podcast “The Table Women”, which explores the ups and downs of the female experience in entertainment.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I’ve had to learn not to let society define what success means for me. It’s my job to define success for myself. I’m the only person who can truly know whether I’m happy and fulfilled. Financial gain or fame without a sense of happiness and fulfillment is not success, even though our society often defines it that way. So I hold tightly onto my sense of self by doing daily meditation exercises and having conversations with my “Source with a capital S” to stay in touch with the things that fulfill me: doing what I love and having authentic and deep relationships with the people I collaborate with. I can’t control what happens after the songs I write leave my pen…but I can find joy and success in the process of writing them.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish I’d had the opportunity to attend Belmont University, where I now teach, to learn about the music industry and the songwriting process. That option didn’t exist when I arrived in Nashville, but I feel like it’s saving my students a good 10 years of learning things the hard way.

Also, some wonderful learning and networking platforms have now been developed for songwriters, like SongTown and Global Songwriters’ Connection. I would have jumped on those opportunities if they had existed when I was learning the ropes!

Contact Info:

• Website: victoriabanks.net
• Instagram: @victoriabanksmusic
• Facebook: facebook.com/vbanks
• Twitter: @victoriabanks
• Youtube: youtube.com/victoriabanks1
• Other: Ko-fi (a subscription service where I share unreleased songs and the stories behind them): www.ko-fi.com/victoriabanks

Image Credits
Suzanne Sagmeister