So much has happened since Chvrches’ last album, Love Is Dead, was released in 2018 that it feels like an entire lifetime ago. And, in many ways, it was. An entirely different era, in fact. One now known as pre-Covid, pre-insurrection. Yet for a while, it’s already felt like “post-apocalypse” (until Mother Nature finally steps in to say, “Bitch, I’ll show you a fucking apocalypse”). But something about “Good Girls” indicates lead singer Lauren Mayberry is still hopeful about our potential to “change.” Starting with “killing our idols” (more to the point, our male ones). Which, for many fanbases, could prove an impossible challenge.
On the heels of “How Not to Drown” (a Robert Smith-featuring track that rivals his majestic inclusion on Crystal Castles’ “Not In Love”), the second single from their forthcoming album, Screen Violence, “Good Girls” finds Mayberry embodying her usual blend of ardency and (rightful) accusation as she sings, “Killing your idols is a chore/And it’s such a fucking bore/‘Cause I don’t need them anymore.” This said just after a dark room-developed image of the band is stuffed through the shredder to indicate she wants the statement applied to anyone who might “worship” her or the band as well. This is all to suggest the illusory godlike status we imbue people with—specifically famous people—for the eventual joy of ripping them apart. Though, to be fair, some of them end up deserving it.
Filled with the band’s standard 80s-loving aesthetics (it looks a lot like “How Not to Drown”—and Screen Violence’s first single, “He Said She Said”—that way), the presence of a phoropter (a.k.a. the machine you glance through when you get an eye test) that Lauren gazes into further indicates the message of taking a deeper look at one’s priorities and values—including the ilk they have, for whatever reason, elevated to such a high standard. One that reinforces harmful tropes and stereotypes such as what it means to be a “good girl” (the very pressure-laden cliche that caused at least part of Britney Spears’ illustrious nervous breakdown).
Which is also why saying she doesn’t “need” these idols anymore applies to the false importance placed on—most especially—male figures. Often literally, if the ever-anachronistic Mount Rushmore isn’t enough of an indication. The stresses put on women to be “good girls” even to this day as men still get to coast on the still-too-ingrained “philosophy” of “boys will be boys” is yet another reason why killing the largely male-dominated “idols” that continue to haunt as statues or wings in buildings or buried-in-Paris rock stars with their “transcendent” presence and influence is essential. And why Mayberry sardonically sings, “Good girls don’t cry/And good girls don’t lie/And good girls justify/But I don’t/Good girls don’t die/And good girls stay alive/And good girls satisfy/But I won’t.” No longer willing to except the “idol-enforced” definition of a “good girl,” Mayberry further declares, “They tell me I’m hellbent on revenge/I cut my teeth on weaker men/I won’t apologize again.”
Directed by Scott Kiernan (who also edited and worked on the visual effects of the aforementioned videos for “He Said She Said” and “How Not to Drown” in his role as the album’s creative director), the surreal, symbol and shape-drenched visuals are certainly not abstract in communicating what Mayberry wants to say with regard to “the misogynistic ideals inflicted upon women.” She also adds into her lyrical napalm, “Is it easier when you don’t have to start again?/When you don’t wanna make amends?/I want to know that feeling.” In short, she wants the same luxury of hypocrisy and “passes” that men are allowed.
To further shed light on the manifold benefit of everyone killing their (male) idols—mainly because male idols are the ones who consistently engage in being vile—Mayberry explained, “The opening line was something I wrote after listening to some friends arguing about the present day implications of loving certain problematic male artists—I was struck by the lengths that people would go to in order to excuse their heroes and how that was so juxtaposed to my own experiences in the world.” Meaning that, as a woman, no one—not even fellow women—are half as ready to give a “pass” for certain behavior. Least of all when a woman “dares” to do the same things men have done for centuries. This includes dating someone far younger (Madonna), being “overly” sexual (Madonna and Britney) and gaining any amount of weight (literally everyone at some time or another). Thus, Mayberry added to her impassioned and valid statement, “Women have to constantly justify their right to exist and negotiate for their own space. We’re told that Bad Things don’t happen to Good Girls. That if you curate yourself to fit the ideal—keep yourself small and safe and acceptable—you will be alright, and it’s just not fucking true.” Again, ask Britney goddamn Spears about that.
So yeah, Mayberry is here to tell us that it’s time to do away with this antiquated notion of ensuring that “idols” stay on their pedestal even after being slightly knocked down due to one too many sexual assault allegations, violent altercations and the like. And this isn’t meant in the way that tabloids (tangible or otherwise) and the public relish tearing women down once they’ve reached a certain level. No, this is about reconciling how easy it’s been for male idols to sustain being worshipped in the face of, oh just for a recent example, inciting an insurrection. And how it needs to stop if we’re ever to eradicate the bullshit notion of a “good girl.” A mythic lie told to keep women “in line” for the sake of persistent patriarchal dominance.
