CHVRCHES have released two good albums and one excellent album. Their latest single “He Said She Said,” makes it seem that their upcoming fourth album is on track for the latter category. The last single the Scottish group, who celebrate 10 years together this year, was a reinterpretation of 2018’s “Forever” off their last album Love Is Dead. Over the year’s they’ve teamed up with Marshmello and did a song for the video game Death Stranding: Timefall. “He Said She Said” is the band’s first track after being separated by the pandemic (Lauren Mayberry and Iain Cook in LA and Martin Doherty in Glasgow) that was put together over video calls.
“He Said She Said” finds the trio back in their element of head-banging synthpop. The aggressive electric drum hits cozy up against riveting synth work; the track is a perfect concoction of shimmery melodies and thorny aggravation. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” lead vocalist Lauren Mayberry shouts during the chorus. The preceding lines simmer with an uneasiness as a result of gaslighting and mental manipulation. “He said it’s all in your head / But keep an ear to the grapevine / Get drunk / But don’t be a mess,” she sings.
In a statement, Mayberry explained the inspiration behind the track: “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.
“‘He Said She Said’ is my way of reckoning with things I’ve accepted that I know I shouldn’t have,” she continued. “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 fucking 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.”
