Glasgow-based electronic pop band Chvrches have released a powerful new single ‘He Said She Said’ today. Its lyrics reflect unrealistic social expectations and toxic sayings which many women, including the band’s lead singer Lauren Mayberry, have been told their entire lives, such as “Be sad but don’t be depressed”, “Get drunk but don’t be a mess” and “Look good but don’t be obsessed”, followed by a repetition of “Feel like I’m losing my mind”.
Mayberry expressed her frustrations in a statement: “I feel like I have spent a lot of my life (personally and professionally) performing the uncomfortable balancing act that is expected of women and it gets more confusing and exhausting the older I get. Be successful but only in the way we want you to be. Speak up for yourself but not so loudly that you steal men’s thunder. Be attractive but only for the benefit of men, and certainly don’t be vain. Strive to be The Hot Sad Girl but don’t actually be sad in a way that’s inconvenient for anyone. Be smart but not smart enough to ask for more than what you’re being given.”
She added: “‘He Said She Said’ is my way of reckoning with things I’ve accepted that I know I shouldn’t have. Things I pretended weren’t damaging to me. It was the first song we wrote when we started back up, and the opening line (“He said, you bore me to death”) was the first lyric that came out. All the verse lines are tongue-in-cheek or paraphrased versions of things that have actually been said to me by men in my life. Being a woman is fucking exhausting and it felt better to scream it into a pop song than scream it into the void. After the past year, I think we can all relate to feeling like we’re losing our minds.”
Chvrches have not released any albums since ‘Love Is Dead’ in 2018 and ‘He Said She Said‘ is their first song since ‘Death Stranding‘ in 2019. The new single was recorded mostly remotely by band members working over Zoom. The members are currently working on their fourth album, in which the lead single will be ‘He Said She Said’.
“He Said She Said” is now playing here: https://t.co/I0lM7mMS6r pic.twitter.com/43GXQ9BxX8
— @CHVRCHES (@CHVRCHES) April 19, 2021
First formed in 2011, the band’s music is perfectly summed up by their Spotify bio: “Crafting songs with big synths and bigger hooks, Chvrches combine their roots in Glasgow’s indie community – the band features former members of Aerogramme and the Twilight Sad – with a love of chart-friendly pop.”
