Lauren Mayberry – Change Shapes
Lauren Mayberry today releases her new single “Change Shapes”, an infectious, propulsive and lyrically powerful pop workout, available now via Island Records. It is the third solo song to be released by the CHVRCHES’ vocalist, following last year’s acclaimed debut ballad “Are You Awake?” and leftfield pop masterpiece “Shame”. “Change Shapes” was written by Mayberry, Matt Koma, Cleo Tighe and Evan Blair, and produced by Koma.
The new song sees Mayberry expanding upon the themes of how traditional gender roles have impacted her life and career. “I feel like I perform to the general public but also play a character inside the internal experience, because there is so much negotiation involved in my existence there,” she says. “How do I keep people happy enough that they’ll let me do the creative work that I want to? I feel quite fake and hypocritical sometimes because so much of the narrative around the band is “feminist”, but my experience inside of it hasn’t been a lot of the time. I feel like I did all this work to make things function but when you DO adapt yourself in that way, it’s seen as manipulative, in order to get what you want.”
Lauren Mayberry still remembers what it felt like to sit alone in her teenage bedroom, headphones on, listening to artists like Tori Amos and Fiona Apple as if it was some kind of private spiritual practice. At 15, she was already playing in bands, and although there was plenty of music she and her male bandmates could agree on, she knew from experience that they would just tease her if she tried to get them into Tori, Fiona, PJ Harvey or Kathleen Hanna.
With her new solo work, Mayberry is now able to write about sexuality and empowerment from a profoundly personal perspective, for the very first time, and reconnect with Tori, Fiona, PJ and
Hanna, and with the influence of 90s British girl groups like All Saints and Sugababes. In discovering who she is as a solo artist, she has accessed a new world of inspiration, and a deep well of creativity she’s had within her all along. Anyone lucky enough to get a ticket for her first solo world tour last autumn, witnessed this new era first hand and as NPR remarked about her set at The Anthem in DC, “this show feels significant. Like a moment people might talk about years from now as the start of something big.”, and with “Change Shapes” Mayberry shows there’s plenty more still to come.
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