Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry shares snippet of debut solo single ‘Are You Awake?’

Chvrches‘ frontwoman Lauren Mayberry has shared a snippet of her debut solo single ‘Are You Awake?’.

The Scottish singer-songwriter announced on social media yesterday (August 14) that her first track as a solo artist would be arriving on September 1. Fans who want to hear a teaser snippet of the track can pre-save the single on Spotify or pre-add it to Apple Music to unlock a 33-second audio clip.

“Please give me a sign/ Give me a Hollywood line,” Mayberry sings on the gentle piano track, a strong departure from the synth-led maximalism of Chvrches’ earlier work. “Some feelings don’t fade away with space and time/ It’s a state of mind/ It’s just a state of mind.”

In a video posted to Instagram Mayberry said she was “flip-flopping between excitement and abject terror” about releasing the single, which followed a teaser video of the singer shooting the cover art depicting her curled up in a huge white bed sheet.

Mayberry first announced her solo music venture and Chvrches’ hiatus last month, though assured fans that Chvrches is not over.

“I met Iain [Cook] and Martin [Doherty] when I was 23 — a little baby of a person, in hindsight. Looking back on what we’ve achieved together, so much of it doesn’t feel real or even possible,” she wrote on Instagram. “I am so proud of all the chapters our band has been able to have and I am so grateful to my bandmates for taking me on that journey with them.”

“We are all confident that the Chvrches story has many more pages yet to be written,” she continued.

“For a long time, I couldn’t imagine ever doing anything outside of Chvrches. Since I was 15 years old, I have always, only, ever been in a band,” she wrote. “I always wanted so badly to belong somewhere — to be one of the boys, and to fit in.”

“But as I sail/stumble through this era of my life (your 20s really do go by in a flash, kids), it has started to feel like there are things I want to write and say and do that need to be done on my own,” she said.

Alongside the announcement, she shared news of autumn headline shows in the US, UK and Europe. You can find all dates and tickets here.

Mayberry’s solo announcement came just four months after Chvrches released their one-off single ‘Over’, marking the end of their Screen Violence era.

Speaking to Rolling Stone UK, Mayberry explained how the new effort was originally meant to feature on the 2021 album. “There was originally a more Screen Violence-y version, but we’ve changed the lyrics,” she explained.

“It didn’t make sense on its own and it would have just seemed really dark and sinister. It’s not what you want to lead with all the time. Chvrches has always been about the balance between the light and the dark. It had been a while since we pressed the pop dial, so it was nice to get back into that head space”.