Lauren Mayberry

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.” Growing up in Scotland, Mayberry began playing piano and drums in her early teens. By 15, she had started playing in bands, learning how to get her ideas across in environments where her gender often felt an obstacle, or a kind of invisibility cloak. Although there was plenty of music she and her male bandmates could agree on, she knew from experience that it would be an uphill battle getting them into Tori or Fiona or PJ Harvey or Kathleen Hanna.