Self Esteem
Courtesy of the artist
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Courtesy of the artist
Set Checklist
- “Focus Is Energy”
- “Mom”
- “If Not Now, It is Quickly”
- “I Do And I Do not Care”
Think about a stadium pulsing with the power of tens of 1000’s of sports activities followers when a track hits, and the place erupts.
That is the kind of track Rebecca Lucy Taylor, higher often known as Self Esteem, has at all times dreamt of writing.
“These moments the place music is used to intensify the strain,” she says.
Earlier this summer time, that imaginative and prescient landed. A track from her new album, A Sophisticated Lady, scored the BBC’s opening montage for England’s Euro 2025 run. Plus, the Lionesses went on to safe the Girls’s Championship title.
YouTube
The track, “Focus Is Energy,” builds to a hovering and defiant chorus: “I need to be right here.” It is a fateful choice for Taylor, amid her latest surge in success and the strain that follows it.
A Sophisticated Lady comes on the heels of a breakout yr for the English musician. Her 2021 album, Prioritise Pleasure, drew rave critiques and earned a 2022 Mercury Prize nomination.
“All of the sudden, everybody’s listening. I used to be promoting tickets, and I used to be kind of this huge deal within the U.Okay.,” she says. “If you wish to capitalize on that — and I am being actually binary and reductive — however, it’s important to broaden your sound.”
“Focus Is Energy” is simply the entry level. A Sophisticated Lady is irreverent and frank, constructed by an artist who spent years in a band the place she did not usually have full management. (Taylor break up from her band, Sluggish Membership, in 2017.)
“Self Esteem has at all times been like taking my bra off on the finish of a protracted day,” she says. “I simply do not overthink it. I simply do it.”
On this session, Taylor talks about making A Sophisticated Lady and what it feels wish to take management of her profession after almost 15 years of hustle.
On working with a pop vocal producer
“I used to be in a band for thus lengthy with any person else, and I simply could not get my approach. Self Esteem has been like taking my bra off on the finish of a protracted day. I simply do not overthink it, I simply do it — the vocal supply or the vibe.
“Really, on this file, I attempted to work with a vocal producer simply out of curiosity, as a result of what do all the large pop stars have after they make albums? There’s, like, particular tuning individuals and there is supply individuals. So I needed to see what that was like. What occurs when you’ve got one? So I attempted it, and I instantly hated it. I by no means did it once more. …
“This goes again to pushing by way of for mainstream success or not as a result of I see why a vocal coach serving to you ship in a sure approach may scientifically join with extra brains. I get it. However I simply can’t do it.”
On “The Curse” and sobriety
“I had the lyric — ‘If I am sober or drunk, it is nonetheless me in the midst of the issue’ — as a result of I’ve accomplished that. For 20 years now, I’ve gone sober. I’ve accomplished AA. I’ve dedicated to it. I’ve discovered it harder. It is onerous to clarify, nevertheless it created extra issues than with the ability to average and simply be capable of do what everybody else is doing round me. Then, in fact, there’s the chance it could actually go too far.
“Me and all my buddies are the identical. I’ve a number of buddies which are actually efficiently sober and it really works for them. That is nice. I really feel like we hear these tales, and we hear the tales of, like, ‘Cheers to the weekend. Let’s get effed up.’ However what most of us are practising is attempting to efficiently sit within the center.
“It is simply my fact. The extra trustworthy I’m about myself, the freer I really feel. … I feel lots of people have actually linked to it.”
On calling the album A Sophisticated Lady
“I had simply written down in my cellphone, ‘I am such an advanced lady.’ It virtually amuses me to say that as a result of I am not. I am probably the most primary lady experiencing life like each lady with the hand I have been dealt, which is a reasonably privileged one.
“I am reacting completely moderately to the system, nevertheless it nonetheless registers as difficult to different individuals. I do not make sense. … It is simply such a helpful phrase, however it may be weaponized. It may be used to gloss over issues, as a substitute of interrogate them. It is a terrific phrase.
“I’ve spent so lengthy in my life attempting to be like all people else, or this picture-perfect ending. It was like I used to be popping out as somebody who cannot do this.”
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The online story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and reserving coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.
