Self Esteem (musician)

Rebecca Lucy Taylor (born 15 October 1986), also known by her stage name Self Esteem, is a British musician and actor.

Taylor was previously a member of folk duo Slow Club, which formed in Sheffield in 2006.

The band consisted of multi-instrumentalists Charles Watson and Taylor, with Watson on the piano, Taylor on the drums, and both performing guitars and vocals.

Taylor started posting art and short notes on Instagram under the name Self Esteem in 2015.

Prior to releasing music under the name, she used Self Esteem for a range of artistic projects including an exhibition of paintings and prints, and short films.

Speaking about her stage name, Taylor has said she decided on the name around six years before she started using it, and that "I wanted to call it Sex Appeal or Self Esteem...cos band names are bad, there's no good ones. But I probably should have just called it Rebecca Lucy Taylor!".

A big fan of Queen, she based her logo on Freddie Mercury's signature.

Taylor was inspired with the confidence to pursue a solo career after watching RuPaul's Drag Race – "that whole ethos of not being ashamed to be confident or brilliant".

Slow Club's final tour in the winter of 2016, and Taylor's dissatisfaction and unhappiness with the band, was captured in the documentary Our Most Brilliant Friends, directed by Piers Dennis and released in 2018.

She credits Jamie T with encouraging her to release her music after she shared some of her early solo work with him; his 2016 album Trick ends with a track called "Self Esteem".

First known as one half of the band Slow Club, she launched a solo career as Self Esteem, when she began singing about mental health themes, with the single "Your Wife" in 2017, followed by the albums Compliments Please in 2019 and Prioritise Pleasure in 2021.

A multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter and theatre composer, she is winner of the 2021 BBC Music Introducing award and Prioritise Pleasure was nominated for the 2022 Mercury Prize.

From September 2023 to March 2024 she is performing the lead role of Sally Bowles in the West End production of Cabaret.

Taylor was born and grew up in Rotherham, England, UK.

Her father was a steelworker and an amateur musician in a band, and her mother was a secretary.

She attended Wales High School in Rotherham where she credits music teacher Antony Wright with teaching her to sing.

Her main interests as a child were music, dance and cricket and she has described herself as a "choir nerd" while at school.

The band paused working in 2017, following an extensive tour to support their last album, owing to differing musical interests and Taylor feeling unfulfilled.

Taylor released her first music under the Self Esteem moniker, the single "Your Wife", in September 2017, with "OMG" as a B-side.

The track was released on Kick + Clap, a label run by Django Django member Dave Maclean.

Her first live show as Self Esteem was in October 2017 at Margate Arts Club.

Taylor went on to feature on the Django Django track "Surface to Air", which appeared on the band's 2018 album Marble Skies.

Tracks for the Self Esteem debut album Compliments Please were recorded from January to September 2018, and Taylor signed a solo deal with Fiction Records in April 2018.

During the period of recording she played live at Latitude, Tramlines and a sold out show at Omeara Theatre London, followed by an eight-show UK tour in autumn 2018.

The first single "Wrestling" was released in July 2018 followed by "Rollout" in September 2018, "The Best" in January 2019 and "Girl Crush" in February 2019.

Compliments Please was released on 1 March 2019 on Fiction Records.

It was well received critically, with an average rating of 80/100 according to Metacritic.

A deluxe version was released in October 2019 with an additional track "Rooms".

In March 2019 Self Esteem completed an 11-date UK tour in support of the album release and played at UK festivals including Glastonbury, British Summer Time and Latitude.

In December 2019 she released a standalone single, "All I Want for Christmas Is a Work Email", recorded at Abbey Road Studios.

On 1 May 2020, Self Esteem released the Cuddles Please EP, with stripped down versions of tracks from Compliments Please – "Favourite Problem", "The Best" and "In Time" – along with a cover of "Miami Memory" by Alex Cameron.

The EP features Neighbourhood Voices, a Sheffield-based female choir.

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 she organised an online all-female festival, Pxssy Pandemique, to raise money for Women's Aid.

Much of the Self Esteem second album was written before the COVID-19 pandemic that caused intermittent public health restrictions in the UK from March 2020 onwards.

These restrictions delayed its recording and release.

The record was co-written, recorded and produced with Johan Hugo Karlberg, the producer who also worked on Compliments Please.

The first single from the album, "I Do This All the Time" was released in April 2021.

Largely spoken word, and consequently compared to Baz Luhrmann's "Sunscreen", Taylor said that "I went into this studio in Sheffield just to experiment, and I ended up building the backing track up, and just reading out my iPhone notes in a row".

The single was a huge critical and commercial success, and was praised by Tracey Thorn and by Jack Antonoff.

It represented Taylor's first big music industry breakthrough.