Synth-pop experts CHVRCHES are preparing to release their new album Screen Violence on August 27. We’ve already gotten glimpses of the project with “He Said She Said” and “How Not to Drown,” which featured The Cures’ Robert Smith. Today, they’ve shared the thought-provoking third single “Good Girls.”
“Good Girls” opens with a jab about killing your idols. It’s boring and tiresome work—if the past couple weeks has taught us anything, justice according to cancel culture doesn’t really mean anything when mass wealth and power are involved. Why do we think celebrity culture is a good idea when it only exposes the huge gap of inequity, and the people at the top are outed as vermin with moral rabies? “Is it easier when you don’t have to start again / When you don’t have to make amends? / I want to know that feeling,” lead vocalist Lauren Mayberry asks during the chorus.
“The opening line (‘killing your idols is a chore’) was something I wrote after listening to some friends arguing about the present day implications of loving certain problematic male artists,” Mayberry said in a press statement. “I was struck by the lengths that people would go to in order to excuse their heroes and how that was so juxtaposed to my own experiences in the world. Women have to constantly justify their right to exist and negotiate for their own space. We’re told that Bad Things don’t happen to Good Girls. That if you curate yourself to fit the ideal—keep yourself small and safe and acceptable—you will be alright, and it’s just not fucking true.”
Hear the song below.
