You're putting a chunk of Lauren out in the world.
That sounds terrible and has to go down as my worst analogy-
I do that every morning 20 minutes after a cup of tea.
Sorry...
That just became the promo for this.
Just regular. It's great.
This whole event's been brought to you by Metamucil.
When your band is launched by the internet,
should you have to put up with the internet's standard barrage of sexism?
That is the question that Lauren Mayberry from Scottish band 'Chvrches' has been tackling
ever since they hit the international scene.
Alongside the accolades and the sold out shows has also come a steady stream of misogyny and threats.
And so when we sat down together at the Splendour in the Grass 2018 forum
we talked music, Joan of Arc and why female musicians shouldn't have to put up with it.
I wanted to ask you about an encounter you had where a producer made you watch 'Joan of Arc'.
He did, yes. The Milla Jovovich version.
So why did a producer want you to watch Milla Jovovich giving a big
anthemic sort of speech, what was that gonna give you?
Well it was a guy called Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics, a band.
That people may have heard of.
It was the first day that we'd met him and at 6 o'clock everyday apparently he makes a martini.
So he was like 'guys have some martinis.'
And he was like 'incidentally I've queued up this scene.'
And this screen came down.
And he was like 'I want you to watch that and think about whether you're trying hard enough.'
And I was like what?
What?
-That's a little bit pass-agg. Just a little bit. -Well then I was like...
that's offensive I'm definitely trying hard enough, what do you mean?
But at the end of it he was like 'well, you're trying like 70%.'
And then he said,
'It seems to me that you wanna be like a punk rock Joan of Arc of pop music so just do it and stop complaining.
so just do it and stop complaining about it.
And I was like, oh....
And what did you take away from that? Out of curiosity.
Well after I was like done crying or whatever.
I don't know I thought like a lot of the performance stuff is pretending to be those things.
It is pretending to be like a hundred times-
What is that?!
-That's a spider. In Australia. -Oh it's a spider. It's alright.
What kind- oh you just killed it you didn't even know what one it was!
It's Australia, ya kill them.
-I thought there was- -No.
What's the one?
That was just a little brown one we don't know and now it's smeared.
So fun fact, I'm completely colour-blind so as a reflex I just kill them all.
Alright you are like punk rock Joan of Arc of killing insects.
And that was how I injected my personality into this moment.
It kind of fits, you know you're being 120% yourself.
Just killing shit.
Yep.
I used to have a boss that would always say to us at the beginning, working on a T.V show
and when we started the T.V show he said:
'All of you just need to be aggressively you.'
Sounded great but in practice you were like 'what does that even mean?
But I guess the same thing applies to that moment.
What do you do with that advice, with that interpretation of you?
Yeah well I feel like I can apply it to the performance part of the band.
When I was growing up or whatever I was never the person that was like
in the centre of the room being like 'look at me.'
So stupid job choice.
Terrible. You've made a series of terrible life choices.
And then I guess when he said that I was "like yeah you should always be pushing yourself."
Before music, you did a masters.
Woah! You did your research.
I have my moments.
And I'm going to see if I can remember it by heart, 'Images of femininity in women's magazines'?
-That was my boring thesis. -Yeah.
But what I'm curious about is,
having a spent a lot of time researching and thinking about it
and then suddenly being in a position
where you are being photographed and you are being put in photo shoots,
what are the rules about how I do and don't want to be represented?
Well I think when we first started, people thought that,
well maybe this is my projection but it seemed like people thought I was being really uptight
or really overly conscious about stuff.
And I definitely was working a lot out of fear which I don't know is great but...
In hindsight well I'm kinda glad
we were conscious of trying to say no to certain things just so you set the precedent.
Cause I think it's hard to put that genie back into the bottle after it's come out.
Like there's, I'm not gonna say what magazine it is, but it has been re-branded
and then they keep being like 'do you guys want to be interviewed by this magazine?'
'Ah the guys can't come.' They're like 'it's a men's lifestyle magazine now.'
And I'm like a spade is a spade I don't care what cover you put on it.
Like years and years of disgusting shit does not like,
obliterated cos you were like 'no no no we changed it cos' it wasn't selling.'
Please tell me you actually said that. I wanna be there for that conversation.
I said that to her our manager who's just like: 'She's not available.'
There's a world of people out there that think that
when a musician gets up and has an opinion about something other than music,
yeah just play the hits. You're a musician you're not entitled to have an opinion on the world on politics.
If that person was sitting in front of you, what would you say to that person?
I think I wonder what people think songs are written about, y'know?
I don't mean that in a sarcastic way I just mean songs are thoughts and feelings about your life about
the world, about people you know, about things that you see.
And I guess people are like "Well that's sensitive you shouldn't be in this job."
I'm like well, I don't know.
I think there's a difference between people being like 'uh that record sucks' and someone being like
'Hey I wanna rape you.'
Like woah!
That's a very big defined jump.
And then when people are like 'you don't have thick enough skin you shouldn't be in a band.'
Excuse me?
What other job is that an appropriate response?
Why do you think people have that opinion?
It was a woman that said that, I remember it.
Shouldn't be in a pop band if you don't wanna take that and then I was like
it's kind of extra sad because I was like oh...
I think we all do that, you internalise the messages that are put out to you
and in that moment you've just soaked up this misogynist culture.
And I definitely- there's things where you realise
Why do I want to do that? Oh because this is how we've grown up and this is what we think is real and normal.
If you could change anything about the way we talk about women and pop music, what would you change?
The fact that we separate it into women in pop music.
I don't wanna be a downer or whatever but I'm kinda confident that there's never gonna be a time in my
creative career where I won't be talked about it any way without a gender prefix on it.
Like, that's always...
At least now when people talk to our band about it we have a more constructive conversation.
But even right from the beginning of the band all the questions were gendered
even if you look at the way people write about the band.
They're never like Martin and Ian are frolicking around the stage, flaunting their arms in black t-shirts.
It's always like wispy voiced and elvin or diminutive.
They're short too, no one calls them diminutive.
Heya Lauren thank you so much for sitting down with us.
Yeah, thank you guys for coming.
Thanks for having me.
And enjoy the rest of your Splendour.