Lauren Mayberry has been fronting CHVRCHES for the past decade-plus, but in 2023, she also began releasing solo music. Today, she returns with her third single, "Change Shapes" — a punchy pop bop about negotiating her role as a woman in the music industry to coincide with International Women's Day (IWD).
Released via Island Records, the track follows last year's "Are You Awake?" and "Shame." It was co-written with Matthew Koma, Cleo Tighe and Evan Blair, and produced by Koma.
“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,” Mayberry explained of the inspiration behind "Change Shapes" in a press release. “How do I keep people happy enough that they'll let me do the creative work that I want to?"
She continued, "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," press notes adding that she remembers starting to play in bands at age 15 and knowing her male bandmates would only tease her if she tried to get them to listen to her beloved Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, PJ Harvey and Kathleen Hanna. "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.”
The pulsing "Change Shapes" slithers with a distorted bass line, and has an undeniable bite that reflects Mayberry's frustration with the catch-22 that is being a woman in public. You can give it a listen below.
