He Said She Said

Chvrches' first single since "Death Stranding" in October 2019, "He Said She Said" was born out of vocalist Lauren Mayberry's reflections on the painful balancing act expected of women. He said, "You need to be fed" "But keep an eye on your waistline" and "Look good, but don't be obsessed" Keep thinkin' over, over I try During the coronavirus lockdown, Mayberry thought about what she had experienced as a woman in the music industry. She'd previously just glossed over these engagements, buried her uncomfortable feelings, and carried on as normal, but with the time and space to look back at these confusing and exhausting experiences, she now realizes she shouldn't have accepted them. Arising from these contemplations, Mayberry wrote this song with her Chvrches bandmates.

In conceiving the empowering song, Mayberry confronted some of the damaging expectations she'd taken on, including: "Be successful but only in the way we want you to be. Speak up for yourself but not so loudly that you steal men's thunder. Be attractive but only for the benefit of men, and certainly don't be vain. Strive to be The Hot Sad Girl but don't actually be sad in a way that's inconvenient for anyone. Be smart but not smart enough to ask for more than what you're being given."

When Chvrches started working on their fourth album, they found themselves on opposite ends of the Atlantic and unable to meet in person because of COVID-19. While Mayberry and Martin Doherty were stuck in Los Angeles, Iain Cook was back home in Glasgow. They began working remotely, and "He Said She Said" was the first song the Chvrches trio wrote. They came up with its bare bones in about an hour, 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," Mayberry said. "Being a woman is f---ing 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."