Interview: Self Esteem
Self Esteem
Self Esteem has just released one of the most acclaimed and anticipated albums of the year with her second record ‘Prioritise Pleasure’. Philip Giouras caught up with the Sheffield superstar just ahead of its launch to discuss creating the album
Taken from Issue III - 2021
“I think it will be crazy. Just to feel like I’m not winning people over anymore. And I’m just here and people accept it and are coming along with me. It’s like, absolutely amazing” Rebecca Lucy Taylor who also goes by the pop moniker Self Esteem tells me as we discuss her new record ‘Prioritise Pleasure’.
One of the most anticipated releases of the year, the record has been inundated with critical acclaim and praise. With an average review score of 92/100, it’s currently the third highest rated album of the year. It’s the second release for Taylor under the name of Self Esteem and the appreciation feels to us, long overdue for Taylor. One half of the indie-folk duo Slow Club, in 2017 she branched out on her own to pursue the creative avenues she’d always wanted to, resulting in her brilliant debut record ‘Compliments Please’. However, there was still a feeling that Taylor was a hidden gem being overlooked, such was the outcry when she was missing from the following year’s Mercury Prize shortlist. All that changed when the lead single for Prioritise Pleasure, ‘I Do This All The Time’ dropped back in the summer. As a music writer or even listener, you hear a lot of good songs, there are many great songs, but there are very few monumental songs that feel like significant cultural milestones, IDTATT is most certainly one of them. Its impact rippled across the industry, it soon became a firm favourite on alternative stations. The track is structured as a spoken word mantra surrounded by glorious strings with lyrics that touch upon topics such as the sexism Taylor has endured in the industry ‘If you weren’t doing this you’d be working in McDonald’s’, as well as the societal pressure of marriage, ‘Getting married isn’t the biggest day of your life / All the days that you get to have are big’ and just generally not wanting to go to your friend’s social gatherings ‘If I went to your barbecue, I’d feel uncomfortable and not be sure what to say anyway’.
I asked Taylor what it felt like having the track and her record resonating with so many listeners “It’s amazing. I always say this but I do it for myself first and foremost. But when it helps other people it’s just the most wonderful feeling and I suppose there is the theory that I’m doing what I wish I’d seen when I was 18 or hearing what I wish I could hear... I wish someone else in their 30s was going “It doesn’t matter if you’ve not gotten married yet”. I suppose it’s selfish but then it’s also a way to try and affect change. I also feel less alone ultimately, the overwhelming sentence of my life has been like, “What the fuck is wrong with me?” But now I’m like oh there’s nothing wrong with me loads of other people think like this too… I was fine the whole time”.
So it’s quite incredible to think initially it wasn’t set to be that monumental first single “We were going to do ‘How Can I Help You’, there was a lot of back and forth, and the struggle is what is a single anymore? You know, and what do you want to achieve? And I just realized ‘I Do This All The Time’ was exactly how I wanted to set my stall out for the second album, and yeah, the fact it went really well, I was like Yesssss! I was right” she tells me with a laugh.
Whilst the aforementioned ‘I Do This All The Time’ is an incredible song, it’s certainly not the only one. There’s the empowering title track ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ described by Taylor as “a widescreen mantra” in which she remembers to “put myself first and in turn making myself a better, more present person. My journey to accept myself is far from over, but over the last few years, some of the age-old simple shit has started to finally kick in. Love yourself, be in the moment, put your needs first - that all used to feel so abstract and impossible but with a bit of willpower (and writing a tonne of songs about it), I finally not only see the benefits but am actively enjoying them”.
Then there’s the latest single ‘Moody’ which is a reclamation of the countless years of being called moody or mardy as a woman just going about her life “That song is bananas” Taylor tells me “But it is really true, and it’s been a very powerful thing to hold over me throughout my 20s to be like ‘cheer up love’ or this idea that I’m taking life too seriously or making things difficult and now I’m sort of relishing in this realizaiton of how not difficult I was being in my 20s and how much of a right I have to be moody, upset, or worried… Like, I’m exhausted! It’s so hard to be a woman anywhere but in the music industry, even way worse, it’s horrendous. So I’ve got this sort of backdated joy, a sort of present-day enjoyment out of going through the past in my mind and thinking ‘I was absolutely well within my rights’, and its sort of fun, and also I’m excited to see what happens next for me, not being saddled with that fear all the bloody time, it won’t be totally gone but I am realising I have a right to be who I am and feel how I feel, it’s quite magical to be relieved of the stress of it”.
Taylor is an acclaimed and incredible lyricist, she’s known for crafting smart, witty and frank lyrics that provoke an emotional reaction, she manages to be relatable in a completely unique way. Speaking about situations that feel extremely personal yet applying them in a humorous and empathetic manner. It’s also worth noting, Taylor’s lyrical wizardry will extend to her first book, also titled Self Esteem. Set for release this December via YourShelf, it comes with a written endorsement from the modern musical enchantress Florence Welch who describes Taylor as her ‘favourite popstar and soon to be favourite poet’ praising how Taylor ‘elevates the notes app to a high art form’.
The book, which fittingly resembles a small bible in size has its title embossed with gold font on its cover, in a similar fashion to her latest record. The book offers ‘a glimpse into Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s personal and professional journey to becoming a solo artist’ Partdiary, part-poetry it is a collection of Taylor’s ‘thoughts, lyrics, drafts and notes’, described as ‘a look into the deepest corners of Rebecca’s mind – and her phone’.
Whether it be written in the book or lyrics for her latest record, Taylor has an undeniable wit and ability to turn everyday life into striking and often very humorous poetry. I asked Taylor if there was any particular lyrics she loved from the record “Oh man I mean, I am quite proud of a lot of them. They are quite funny, I’m proud of ‘sexting you at the mental health talk seems counterproductive’, that’s very funny, and also very true and timely. I think it’s like a beginning, we’ve all done something that we just know in the moment isn’t helpful” she concludes with a laugh, “I think it’s very ‘Self Esteem’ that notion, I’m also really proud of ‘Getting married isn’t the biggest day of your life, all the days you get to have our big’, it was kind of an epiphany to me in a way where I realized I’d been living with this idea that one day this magical day will happen and the rest of my life will make loads more sense and everything will be brilliant. I really vividly realised that even if I got married, then what? I think it’s a really important thing to remember, I don’t know about anyone else but I feel, certainly, if you were born sort of when I was, that I was sort of fed the line ‘and then when you’ve got all the things life will feel happy’ and to realize that’s not true and put it in one line, so sort of succinctly, I’m so proud of”.
Another cool characteristic of the album that I haven’t seen picked up on much, is the subtle nods throughout the record to other tracks on the album, for instance, lyrics such as “Hunger times my impatience” which appears on I Do This All The Time also forms the chorus of ‘Fucking Wizardry’ or likewise the title ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ was also signalled early on in ‘I Do This All The Time’. I asked Taylor a bit more about the easter eggs scattered across the album “It just sort of naturally happens. There’s more, like the drumbeat on ‘I Do This All The Time’ is identical to my first single off the last record. And there are the lyrics to ‘Moody’ which are about the same person that the lyrics to ‘In Time’ were so they’re all partners, you know toilets get twinned with other places. They’ve all got a twin and everything’s got a little moment somewhere. I guess, it naturally happens to me, I think that’s just how my creative brain works but also, I’m just always keen for it to be more than just music. I want it to be a multi-sensory experience”.
A noticeable aspect sonically when listening to the record is just how grand it is. Like the regal text on the album’s sleeve, there’s opulence in the orchestration of the record, so many string flourishes that really enriches the tracks. I asked Taylor about the thought process behind this “I always want bigger, wider. I want filmic, I want dramatic sounds” and she’s keen to point out due to her budget this is very much an improvised orchestra “Album three, I’m like can we just get a bit more money so I can have players in one room, I’ve got violinists all across the UK recording and we make the string quartet out of that, so I guess it’s an orchestra with boundaries”. Speaking of boundaries, Taylor is keen to push past those when it comes to her record “All I ever want to do is make something just be too much, I don’t want to make dinner party music. I want to make music you have to stop and listen to the lyrics, you have to feel what I’m creating sonically. It’s just what I’m into, I don’t like music that doesn’t do that, I love extremes, I don’t really sit well in neutral... I think there’s loads of music now, so much, loads already that’s happened so if you’re going to do something… it needs to make you feel something”.
I suggest a Royal Albert Hall sixty piece Self Esteem Symphony could be perhaps in the pipeline then “The dream is to do one of those orchestral tours, like fuck yeah, but in a way, I’ll be 35 when the album comes out and not that I care about age, but how I wanna do the rest of my career is that I do want to get to the point where I’m not dancing around in a little outfit anymore, and I am just sort of standing, fucking singing my song with the heavy lifting by the orchestra” she adds with a laugh “It’s all planned”.
Speaking of performances, as you read this Taylor will be part way through her sold-out November Winter Tour aptly described as “just nonstop choreography, Super Bowl halftime show, but in the Bristol Fleece that’s always been the idea”. She’ll be taking to the stage at some of the most acclaimed intimate club venues across the UK “I’m hoping it’s the last time you can get like, close to me on a stage” Taylor says with a chuckle, and in fact, it may well be as she’ll soon be embarking on a larger tour next spring involving a date at the Kentish Town Forum in which she has big plans “next year, I want to do it all, dancers, light design, film work, to me there’s so much opportunity with a gig to not just sing a song, you know, let’s do it all. So yeah, we’ll see, obviously, but I always want to get bigger and bolder and say more every time.” Fans got an early glimpse of what to expect of the tour when Self Esteem performed at this year’s well-loved music festival Green Man, as well as receiving rave reviews from critics, it was notable for the sheer amount of tears flowing from the crowd, enraptured by Taylor and her accompanying ensemble. An incredible experience as Taylor tells me “In over 10 years now that I’ve been playing gigs, I’ve never walked out onto a stage and seen that. So, straightaway I was thinking ‘Oh my god!’. I was shaking, it was incredible and it was just this overwhelming feeling of relief for me of ‘So it’s not going to be a struggle maybe for the next however many months’. I think there’s a mixture of reasons people cried in the crowd, there are people watching me grow up I suppose, there are people in the audience that have seen me play since I was 18 and I guess that’s emotional, but I think personally, the pandemic, the festival, all these emotions were very high for everybody. I also think it’s emotional to see female fucking power, or acceptance, but there was a lot of tears and people crying… which is how I know if it’s been a good gig or not”