Self Esteem
Courtesy of the artist
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Courtesy of the artist
Set Listing
- “Focus Is Energy”
- “Mom”
- “If Not Now, It is Quickly”
- “I Do And I Do not Care”
Think about a stadium pulsing with the vitality 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 called Self Esteem, has at all times dreamt of writing.
“These moments the place music is used to intensify the stress,” she says.
Earlier this summer time, that imaginative and prescient landed. A track from her new album, A Sophisticated Girl, scored the BBC’s opening montage for England’s Euro 2025 run. Plus, the Lionesses went on to safe the Ladies’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 Girl comes on the heels of a breakout 12 months for the English musician. Her 2021 album, Prioritise Pleasure, drew rave opinions and earned a 2022 Mercury Prize nomination.
“Abruptly, everybody’s listening. I used to be promoting tickets, and I used to be kind of this massive deal within the U.Ok.,” she says. “If you wish to capitalize on that — and I am being actually binary and reductive — however, it’s a must to broaden your sound.”
“Focus Is Energy” is simply the entry level. A Sophisticated Girl is irreverent and frank, constructed by an artist who spent years in a band the place she did not usually have full management. (Taylor cut up from her band, Gradual Membership, in 2017.)
“Self Esteem has at all times been like taking my bra off on the finish of an extended day,” she says. “I simply do not overthink it. I simply do it.”
On this session, Taylor talks about making A Sophisticated Girl 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 therefore 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 an extended day. I simply do not overthink it, I simply do it — the vocal supply or the vibe.
“Really, on this report, I attempted to work with a vocal producer simply out of curiosity, as a result of what do all the massive pop stars have once they make albums? There’s, like, particular tuning folks and there is supply folks. So I wished to see what that was like. What occurs when you’ve gotten one? So I attempted it, and I instantly hated it. I by no means did it once more. …
“This goes again to pushing via for mainstream success or not as a result of I see why a vocal coach serving to you ship in a sure approach would possibly 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 performed that. For 20 years now, I’ve gone sober. I’ve performed AA. I’ve dedicated to it. I’ve discovered it harder. It is arduous to elucidate, but it surely created extra issues than having the ability to average and simply be capable to do what everybody else is doing round me. Then, in fact, there’s the danger it might probably go too far.
“Me and all my pals are the identical. I’ve just a few pals which might be 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 working towards is attempting to efficiently sit within the center.
“It is simply my reality. The extra trustworthy I’m about myself, the freer I really feel. … I believe lots of people have actually linked to it.”
On calling the album A Sophisticated Girl
“I had simply written down in my cellphone, ‘I am such an advanced girl.’ It virtually amuses me to say that as a result of I am not. I am essentially the most primary girl experiencing life like each girl with the hand I have been dealt, which is a reasonably privileged one.
“I am reacting completely fairly to the system, but it surely nonetheless registers as difficult to different folks. 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 everyone else, or this picture-perfect ending. It was like I used to be popping out as somebody who cannot try 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.
