There are nights when one realises quite how much effort the business end of showbusiness must be. On a bitterly cold Monday night in Philadelphia, Lauren Mayberry – over from Glasgow, and halfway through a month of criss-crossing the USA – took to the stage to survey a crowd of maybe 500 people, in a venue that holds 1,200.
A good proportion of those 500 people were just like me: middle-aged men. We have every right to be there, of course, and one suspects Mayberry was glad they bought tickets. But I bet she was disappointed some of the remaining 700 or so tickets had not been bought by young women, for this is who this show is for.
Mayberry’s day job is as singer for the Scottish trio Chvrches – pronounced Churches – and this tour was to promote her first solo album, Vicious Creature, which sounds very much like an album written with young women in mind rather than old men. ‘I wish you would stop calling me every time/ You need validation for the qualities you want to hide’, she sang on the opening ‘Crocodile Tears’. Had that lyric been written for middle-aged men, it might more plausibly have been: ‘I wish you would stop yourself from calling me every time/ You’ve forgotten how to programme the thermostat so the heat comes on in the morning.’
Vicious Creature treads similar emotional ground to Self Esteem’s breakout album Prioritise Pleasure. ‘Sorry Etc’ even appears to share Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s anger at how band life treats women: ‘I killed myself to be one of the boys/ I lost my head to be one of the boys/ I bit my tongue to be one of the boys/ I sold my soul to be one of the boys.
Magazine articles are subscriber-only. Keep reading for just £1 a month
SUBSCRIBE TODAY- Free delivery of the magazine
- Unlimited website and app access
- Subscriber-only newsletters
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in