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 vitality of tens of 1000’s of sports activities followers when a tune hits, and the place erupts.
That is the form of tune 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 stress,” she says.
Earlier this summer season, that imaginative and prescient landed. A tune 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 Ladies’s Championship title.
YouTube
The tune, “Focus Is Energy,” builds to a hovering and defiant chorus: “I should be right here.” It is a fateful choice for Taylor, amid her latest surge in success and the stress that follows it.
A Sophisticated Lady comes on the heels of a breakout 12 months for the English musician. Her 2021 album, Prioritise Pleasure, drew rave critiques and earned a 2022 Mercury Prize nomination.
“Immediately, everybody’s listening. I used to be promoting tickets, and I used to be form of this huge deal within the U.Ok.,” she says. “If you wish to capitalize on that — and I am being actually binary and reductive — however, you need to broaden your sound.”
“Focus Is Energy” is just 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, 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 Lady and what it feels prefer to take management of her profession after practically 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 means. 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 document, 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 individuals and there is supply individuals. So I needed to see what that was like. What occurs when you have 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 for mainstream success or not as a result of I see why a vocal coach serving to you ship in a sure means may scientifically join with extra brains. I get it. However I simply cannot do it.”
On “The Curse” and sobriety
“I had the lyric — ‘If I am sober or drunk, it is nonetheless me in the course of the issue’ — as a result of I’ve achieved that. For 20 years now, I’ve gone sober. I’ve achieved AA. I’ve dedicated to it. I’ve discovered it tougher. It is onerous to clarify, however it created extra issues than with the ability to average and simply have the ability to do what everybody else is doing round me. Then, after all, there’s the chance it will possibly 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 making an attempt to efficiently sit within the center.
“It is simply my fact. The extra sincere 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 Lady
“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 fundamental 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, however 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 an excellent phrase.
“I’ve spent so lengthy in my life making an attempt to be like all people 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.
