Lauren Mayberry Releases Debut Solo Album ‘Vicious Creature’

During the past decade as the frontwoman for groundbreaking electro-pop trio CHVRCHES, Lauren Mayberry has been asked about “being a girl in a band” more times than she could count. But that kind of othering and isolation is something she has always been used to as part of her creative world.
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. “It was a lot of confessional female singer-songwriters, music that I knew people I was in bands with had no interest
in” she says, “and I thought of them like, ‘These are my friends who live in my headphones.’ Something that was just for me.” 

But in 2023, with the approach of the 10th anniversary of CHVRCHES’ groundbreaking debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, Mayberry felt reflective in a way she hadn’t anticipated. Looking back at all of the incredible moments of personal evolution and musical growth during her years with the band, she realized that she had hit a creative wall that she wanted to move through. Much like the artists who only lived in her headphones as a teenager, there was a part of her own artistry she had locked away. She says, “There’s things I’ve never been comfortable performing or sharing with a band of men. As much as my time with the band has always had this feminist narrative underpinning it, a lot of my role felt like it was more about me trying to fit in than leading the conversation, and I wondered what it would look like for me to create under different circumstances.”

“So much of this process has been an exercise in empowering myself to listen to my own intuition – something I really trained myself out of,” Mayberry says. “That’s ultimately why you start making things – because you felt a feeling, and you wanted to articulate that somehow. I think it was important for me to relearn that kind of independence and recognize what I bring to any table I choose to sit at.”

Beyond her favorite artists, musicals such as Cabaret and Chicago were also an inspiration – works that dig into the dark, physical, and subversive sides of femininity. “Especially when it came to the visuals for the album, I knew I wanted them to be a part of the storytelling in a way I haven’t been able to do previously,” she says. “I wanted to have an ownership over my physical self and how I was involved in the visual part of the storytelling, so I felt like I was in the driving seat of the aesthetic rather than fitting into a landscape that wasn’t really for me.” 

Over the course of the past year, Mayberry has been sharing songs from the new record, including “Crocodile Tears,” “Something in the Air,” “Shame,” “Change Shapes,” and “Are You Awake?” 

For her first full-length release outside of CHVRCHES, Mayberry sought freedom: from rules, expectations, and preconceptions. Working with prolific producers like Greg Kurstin, Matthew Korma, Tobias Jesso Jr., Ethan Gruska, and Dan McDougall, she accessed not only a new world of inspiration but the deep well of creativity she’s had within her all along.

Today she released her new single, “Sunday Best,” and its accompanying visualizer. For a song Mayberry says is about “looking for light and hope when struggling with grief,” she reunited with Greg Kurstin, who produced much of CHVRCHES 2018 album Love Is Deadand whose earlier credits include Mayberry favorites by Lily Allen, Kylie Minogue, and All Saints, among others. Mayberry says it was also a thrill to work with someone with such deep connections to some of the music that had influenced her sound. “Greg really understood the references I was talking about,” Mayberry notes. “I love how the song ended up feeling vast and cinematic, but still scuzzy and strange,” she says. “That’s my favorite kind of pop music: it focuses on feelings but also imperfections.”