Self Esteem: ‘I was tired of being this sweet heterosexual lady in a band’
In a comedy sketch that was released to promote her 2019 debut Compliments Please, Rebecca Lucy Taylor is grilled about the imagined impact of the album 20 years on (it was so great, it “destroyed music as we know it”). With a transatlantic accent, impeded facial movement and wearing a tiara over a turban , she faces a hostile male interviewer who attempts to sum up her revolutionary sound: it is “melodic complaining”, “poor-me periodcore”, and “menstrual madness set to music”.
“That’s what it is!” cackles Taylor, two years on. “Can’t deny it!” It’s true that the 34-year-old – better known by her nom de disque, Self Esteem – makes music packed with warts-and-all honesty and, yes, a certain amount of justified complaining. Topics include toxic relationships and the insidious effects of the patriarchy. But her songs are also maximalist, danceable and infectiously fun – a wholesale rejection of the restrained indie-folk of her previous band Slow Club. “I’m trying to do a Trojan horse thing,” explains Taylor over a cup of coffee in her PR team’s dazzlingly white offices. “You think you’re getting this sugary injection of a pop song but it’s going to leave you with something more.”
Compliments Please did not have the seismic effect Taylor joked about, but it did establish Self Esteem as an exciting new pop star. Hers is not the kind of ruthlessly commercial pop that is machine-tooled for chart domination. Instead, it’s pop as an aesthetic and a mood – big-chorused but experimCoentianl