In recent days, Chvrches have been sharing mysterious posts on social media, hinting at… something. Now, we know what that something is: The group released a new song today, “He Said She Said.” It’s a giant electro-pop tune with gigantic drum sounds and expansive synths. Lyrically, Lauren Mayberry explains the song:
“Like everyone, I’ve had a lot of time to think and reflect over the past year; to examine experiences I had previously glossed over or deeply buried. 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.
‘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 f*cking 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.”
This appears to be the first taste of Chvrches’ next album, which has yet to be announced. The band spoke about their upcoming LP in an interview from late 2020, with Mayberry saying of it, “It’s definitely got the Chvrches DNA, but I don’t think that these songs could slot into any of the first three records. You want it to be like your band, but you want it to be enough of an evolution that it’s not the same thing over and over again. But how do you do that? Especially with modern day pop music where there’s a pressure to take your sound and put it through the filter of what is popular. I think you can tell that it’s us — it’s not screamo or anything like that.”
Listen to “He Said She Said” above.