During the past decade as the frontwoman for the groundbreaking electro-pop trio CHVRCHES, Lauren Mayberry has been asked about "being a girl in a band" more times than she can count. But that sense of othering and isolation has long been familiar to her in creative spaces.
Mayberry still remembers sitting alone in her teenage bedroom, headphones on, finding solace in artists like Tori Amos and Fiona Apple—an almost 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 recalls. "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 joined bands, learning how to navigate environments where her gender often felt like either an obstacle or an invisibility cloak. While she and her male bandmates could find common ground musically, she knew it would be an uphill battle getting them into Tori, Fiona, PJ Harvey, or Kathleen Hanna.
As the 10th anniversary of CHVRCHES’ debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, approached in 2023, Mayberry found herself unexpectedly reflective. Looking back on her personal and artistic evolution, she realized she had hit a creative wall she wanted to push through. Much like the artists who had once only existed in her headphones, a part of her own artistry had remained locked away. “There are things I’ve never been comfortable performing or sharing with a band of men,” she admits. “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. I wondered what it would look like to create under different circumstances.”
With Vicious Creature, her debut solo album, Mayberry sought freedom from rules, expectations, and preconceptions. The album title comes from a lyric: “Nostalgia is such a vicious creature, another way to say that you fear the future” (from “A Work of Fiction”). “Obsession with the past has always been a difficult thing for me,” she explains. “I hold onto things like a dog and stay loyal to people long past the point that it’s logical or healthy. Nostalgia makes me romanticize people and places that weren’t really good for me, or obsessively dwell on things that have happened. It makes it hard for me to move on sometimes. And I think that is what so much of starting this solo journey was always about for me: trying to find a way to get unstuck and move forward, both in my life and my creativity.”
To begin shaping the album, Mayberry partnered with a few key collaborators. She worked with Tobias Jesso, Jr. and Matthew Koma on the hauntingly unadorned piano ballad “Are You Awake?”—a song about the loneliness that comes with a life on the road. She followed with the defiant, leftfield pop anthem “Shame,” co-written with Koma and Caroline Pennell. Reminiscent of Love. Angel. Music. Baby.-era Gwen Stefani, “Shame” is one of several songs on the album where Mayberry explores themes of sexuality, gender, and empowerment from an intimate perspective—territory that hadn’t always felt right for CHVRCHES.
Although Mayberry initially envisioned an escapist, character-driven approach to the album, circumstances in her personal life led her into more introspective territory. She found a natural creative rhythm with producer Dan McDougall, leading to some of the album’s most emotionally resonant moments.
In discovering who she is as a solo artist, Mayberry has accessed a new world of inspiration and a deep well of creativity she has had within her all along. “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,” she 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.”
Photos by Steve Sym from performance at Thalia Hall in Chicago on February 5, 2025