CHVRCHES vocalist Lauren Mayberry is back with another solo single, “Change Shapes.”
Led by a groovy, pulsating bassline, Mayberry rails against the expectations put on her as a woman, and how her efforts as a feminist are constantly undermined by those who think she’s doing both too much and not enough. “I’m preachin’ to the choir/ I’m a body for hire,” she sings, before launching into the strutting chorus: “I change shapes to get what I want from you/ It’s your game now you’re mad that I learned the rules.”
According to Mayberry, the song revolves around the idea of performance — how she’s a performer within the context of being in CHVRCHES, but also performing the idea of what her audience, her peers, and the music industry at large want her to be. “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,” Mayberry says in a statement. “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.”
“Change Shapes” was written by Mayberry, Cleo Tighe, Evan Blair, and Matthew Koma, who also produced the track. It follows Mayberry’s previous solo singles “Shame” and “Are You Awake?,” which both arrived in fall 2023.
“Change Shapes” Artwork: