Rebecca Taylor, aka Self Esteem, joins our interview during a break from rehearsals for the live show of her forthcoming third album “A Complicated Woman”. I tell her she must be one of the hardest-working artists in the industry and she laughs. “It’s like breakfast, 7ams, then I’m rehearsing, then lunchtime press, then evening press! But it’s all good stuff. Not so long ago, no one cared about my new album!”
It’s said that it takes years of work to become an overnight success. This has been Taylor’s journey. Her second Self Esteem album, 2021’s “Prioritise Pleasure”, topped Album of the Year lists and was nominated for a clutch of awards in the UK. But Taylor spent ten years before that in indie duo Slow Club, winning loyal fans and some decent reviews, but never quite hitting the big time. Disillusioned with the indie scene, Taylor released her first solo album “Compliments Please” in 2019. Again, it earned her critics’ praise and more adoring fans but again, never brought Taylor mainstream success.
“Prioritise Pleasure”, and standout single “I Do This All the Time”, catapulted Self Esteem to the heights Taylor had always dreamed of. Seemingly overnight, she was being talked about and her music played everywhere. Her arresting lyrics, confessional, raw but shot through with a very British humour, resonated with female audiences in particular. Taylor has barely drawn breath in the UK since, performing at a string of festivals including an iconic Glastonbury set in 2022, appearing on numerous TV panel shows and gracing magazine covers. She also, somehow, found time to pursue her love of theatre, composing the soundtrack for the West End play “Prima Facie”, starring Jodie Comer, and completing a months-long run as Sally Bowles in the legendary London staging of “Cabaret”. And then, there’s the small matter of writing, recording and producing a third solo album.
Our conversation takes in the challenges of how to build on a hugely successful album, how theatre inspires her and why for her, just being OK is the message women need in 2025. We end up talking well past our allotted time. “The rehearsal’s about to start again, but I’ve got a few more minutes,” Taylor laughs, peering over her shoulder. “We can keep chatting. Hit me with it!” It’s Taylor all over: generous, eager to connect, always with more to say.
Given all you’ve packed in over the past few years, it’s incredible you had time to make an album at all. Let alone one this good!
It’s been very hard – I’m not going to lie! I’ve made so many albums already. And then Prioritise Pleasure happened and it was just crazy. There was a period of about six weeks of my whole life changing. People following you on the internet, these ridiculously kind reviews, then nominations for things I’d always wanted. It was just so much, and it was obviously amazing, but it was also like I wasn’t really there. It was all just happening to me. And it turns out that’s not the most creative place to be!
It was so frightening – I had nothing. There was nothing in my mind, just nothing. Ideally, I would have had five years off and gone and practised with monks and gone to the Marina Abramovic school and things like that! But obviously you just don’t have that time. And my career so far has been this grafting thing of like “please, can I just get some sort of headway on this, or am I going to have to quit?” I knew I had to keep going.
„I think women don’t need the toxic positivity movement slogans about being comfortable in your own skin. I think that’s just as bad as ignoring the shit women have to go through.“
So I just reasoned with myself. I don’t know if it’s worked. I was like: You’re never gonna repeat what happened there, so just make what’s in your heart. And unfortunately, how complicated I felt is the album I made! It’s not been a pleasant one to make though. Playing it live is going to heal me I think, but making it has been really, really tough. And now, when reviews are coming in, I’ll be like “7/10 – shit! That’s dreadful!” I’m trying to say to myself, No, it fucking isn’t! You’ve just got the context of ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ there!” I’m doing a lot of trying to de-centre reviews, but then when there’s a good one I’ll be like “YES!!”. But the album’s slowly coming back to being mine. It feels like it’s about me again and not for anyone but the fans.
Women love you. This will sound like the most sycophantic statement, but I really feel that women need you. Especially right now with the craziness in the world. I’ve heard your shows compared to being in church and I get that. There’s so many women singing along. I genuinely find your shows quite emotional.
I think when any underground artist like me who ends up having a big hit, there’s a fork in the road with your next work. You either dilute it and make it really mainstream-palatable, or you go fucking weirder than ever! Record companies are like: “Oh, it’s female empowerment! Let’s make fucking Lizzo songs, get huge, global, go to America!”Obviously, I can’t do that, but I still have such a love of pop, and I want to be a generous songwriter. I just wanted to continue the thing I’d started doing. The business-minded me was like, “just make some kind of Dove advert music, cash out and be gone!” But I just can’t. I went in with proper pop song writers at the start of making this album, but I was like, I can’t fucking do this!
But I thought that going 180 and taking a completely different direction was a bit cowardly as well. I’ve done the hardest thing I think I could have done [on this record] with varying degrees of success, but I love that it’s complicated. I think women don’t need the toxic positivity movement slogans about being comfortable in your own skin. I think that’s just as bad as ignoring the shit women have to go through. This album’s saying: sometimes you’ll feel alright, sometimes you won’t and let’s just aim for the middle. One of my collaborators said to me, “you know, it’s going to be really hard to sell ‘OK’!” I probably won’t get the brand deals! But I feel like I need to sell “OK” to me. And I hope that carries on helping other women and people that feel on the outside of things or exhausted by the world.
I think it needs to be OK for women to be just OK. I laughed so much at that line [on opening track “I Do and I Don’t Care”] “We’re not chasing happiness any more girls, we’re chasing nothing. The deep blue OK.” Obviously last year was all about Charli xcx and Brat. And I love that album, but being Brat still feels like work to me. You’ve got to get dressed up and go to the club and have the best time…
And the hangovers! I’d have to take four days out of my life if I partied like that!
Right?! I feel like it’s quite empowering to say to women: You can just be. You don’t have to be striving all the time!
Haha, yes!
Your live shows have always been quite theatrical. But even listening to this album feels like being in a feminist musical, for example with the frequent choruses of women singing. How much did your theatre work influence the record?
I’ve always been really influenced by theatre. I’ve always tried to make my tours like a Peter Gabriel tour or David Byrne show. Blokes have been theatrical for years, but with women artists you can feel like you have to deliver a Gaga level of drama. I strive to just be in it.
I fucking loved being in “Cabaret”! But probably most of all for quite boring reasons. It was so inspiring because I could just throw it out there and no one was tagging me in pictures. It was so freeing. I didn’t overthink a second of it. Every day I had someone making sure the wig was on my head and my clothes were there, that I was getting home ok. My job was to be Sally and it ended there. And I found that so cleansing, just to be able to focus on the performance. Because the music industry is like it is. And my career’s been like it is. Everything you’ve ever seen Self Esteem do I’ve had to figure out how to achieve and how I’m going to pay for it. I just haven’t had a second off in my head for nearly a decade. So I was more inspired by the infrastructure of theatre than anything!
But I’m taking a big risk with the new live show. I could have made a lot more money not doing this, but it feels important for the music and the live performance to meet. The two disciplines are so good for each other. And I’m still so hurt by years of being in an indie band, where you have to pretend you don’t want to be that good. I love working with theatre people, because they want to be fucking good, every day, all day! I very much enjoy being in that environment.
We talk a bit about Taylor’s previous indie duo Slow Club and fans who have been with her since those days.
There’s an incredible kind of sisterhood and kinship with those fans. It’s so funny how many women a similar age to me have had the same fucking journey of it. They were watching Slow Club, probably with a boyfriend, probably trying to dress a certain way and fit in in a certain cool way. And they had the same fucking realisation as me about the same time. When I was saying it out loud, they came with me. And I think my art will continue to be like that.
There’s this constant conversation about me being too old to be a pop star. I think this is what my career will be: a continued drop-in, 12-14 songs I’ve written about how I’m fucking feeling about getting through being alive. I want to make an album when I’m on my deathbed, which will probably be at the age of 55 at this rate! The Slow Club fans show me there’s a point in all this, in me journaling this journey. That won’t go out of style or become not cool. I want to make sure we can all tell our stories for as long as we want to.
This is a really collaborative album – not only the chorus of female voices on a number of tracks, but “In Plain Sight” with Moonchild Sanelly and “Lies” with Nadine Shah. Did you set out to make the album as collaborative as possible?
Yeah, I think you can chart that across the Self Esteem albums. In Slow Club, no one thought I wrote anything. People always assumed the guy with the guitar wrote everything and the pretty girl was just singing it. All that still haunts me today. I’ve still got fucking ego issues, like: “You have to know I’ve done this!” That’s made it hard to let go of control. On [first Self Esteem album] “Compliments Please” it’s still me in the middle, cunty little me being hot! Now I find that deeply embarrassing, because it’s not who I am!
„When we hug on stage, I want women to be reminded: Remember to fucking hug your girls. We’re all in this together and the idea that we’re not is why we’re still so far back.“
The final shed of pretence was when I was like, there’s no point in this if I’m not stood up there holding my sisters’ hands. And musically it’s the same feeling. It’s still hard though, to be the person thinking of it all and doing it all but letting other people in. I still get defensive at assumptions people make. I feel the need to say, “I fucking co-produce all my music!” If there’s a man involved somewhere, people will assume he must have done it. Culturally people still want women to be against each other, so given half a chance everyone’s brain goes to that jealous and bitchy place. When we hug on stage, I want women to be reminded: “Remember to fucking hug your girls”. We’re all in this together and the idea that we’re not is why we’re still so far back.
Can we talk about “69”? Your songs about sexual pleasure are so important, I think. We’re still living in a world where sex is everywhere. But actual pleasure isn’t talked about.
I always wanted to do a new version of Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty”! I remember being 11 and running to the dancefloor when that came on! “69” is also a continuation of “Prioritise Pleasure” on the last record. I still hear so often about how women don’t come, and we fake orgasm. I have not done that for decades now! I have been absolutely not fucking doing that for so long. But I know so many women still do. I’ve realised if you just say what you mean as soon as possible, you avoid a lot of shit, so the song came from that ideology. It was me saying: “Before we fuck, here’s what I like and don’t like. Do with it what you will!”
The album’s cover art is really arresting. It reminds me of “The Handmaid’s Tale”.
A lot of research and prep went into that. I looked at imagery of “The Crucible” and “The Handmaid’s Tale”. That sort of time feels politically and socially quite current again. We’re back to that time in history where women’s role was to rear the kids and so on. I’m not a “witchy girl”, but I watched a documentary called “Witches” on MUBI that links a woman’s postpartum psychosis to the treatment of witches in the past. Then, women were burnt at the stake for what was probably hormonally driven behaviour. It made me think about the constant stress of being a woman: hormonal fluctuations, the constant fears for your safety, all the things that make you mad. Being a woman has made me mad. And I’d have been burnt as a witch, I’d have been lobotomised! The cover art is about trying to say we’re still there. As much as we think we’re empowered and free, we’re one step away from being encased back in that time. It’s actually a shirt collar on my head as well. On stage, I dress in quite a masculine way and that’s part of the armor.
You’ve said you want this to be your stadium moment playing live this summer. I love that, because there’s so much in the media about it being the summer of the Oasis Reunion. And I fucking hate Oasis! That’s for the bros! I feel like you need a stadium moment!
Haha, over the years, playing with male bands, I’ve so often thought, why don’t I get the reaction they do? And by the end of “Prioritise Pleasure” it felt like a fucking football crowd was there. I thought a lot about how men get that release from football and fighting. And what’s our version of that? Often the female artists we’re given, the experience is contained and it’s visual and it’s often still for the male gaze. What’s our version? That’s what I want to explore.
„Everybody and everything scares me. But in a song, I can be ambiguous enough to say what I mean.“
Which of the songs on the album are you proudest of currently?
It’s hard. Making the show, the songs are all coming back to me in a new light. I’m very proud of “The Curse”. I was trying to write about drinking – this thing we all fucking know so well – but not make it binary. It’s either this amazing or terrible thing, because I’m still on that journey. I’m so interested in that song. Some people will be like, fuck me, I feel exactly like that. Some people will skip the fuck out of it, because they don’t want to be confronted with their vices, the quick fixes. You’ve got to be at a time in your life when you want to question them. I’m proud of how complicated that song is. And it’s kind of funny that that’s maybe the most Oasis, lad rock moment! That feels perfect to me!
Is there ever anything you wouldn’t write a song about? Is everything up for grabs?
(laughs) Yeah! I feel a lot of safety behind making music. I realised I’m so confrontational, it’s wild. And it’s actually getting worse! Everybody and everything scares me. But in a song, I can be ambiguous enough to say what I mean.And that’s why I write so much and it’s so easy, because it’s the only place I’m free to say what I fucking mean. In my actual life I don’t do that. My goal is to be able to say more in actual life than I do!
I think that’s why your music connects so much with women – you say what we can’t always articulate clearly. And we listen and and we’re like “God, that’s exactly how I feel!” Like that line [in “I Do This All the Time”]: “Getting married isn’t the biggest day of your life. All the days you get to have are big.”
Thank you, yeah. There’s all these ideas of what we’re meant to be as women, and all of them can be questioned. But it’s hard because if I ended up in a relationship where I wanted to get married or have a child, would I then disappoint people? But that’s the point of calling the record “A Complicated Woman”. I’m saying: all of this is up for grabs. Culturally they bracket you as a woman, like anything you say you have to make complete sense and stick to that forever. I don’t stand by anything I said last week! We’ve got to be allowed to mature and change and grow – that’s kind of my point! Though actually I do stand by that lyric about marriage. I will be binary on that one! Maybe that was my wisest moment…
„A Complicated Woman“, the new album by Self Esteem, is out April 25th 2025. You can preorder the album here.