SELF-ESTEEM

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She puts some of her recent successes down to this change in thinking, the mantra “prioritise pleasure” guiding her to put positive energy and hard work out into the world. “It’s tiny things like, I’ve got to get all this shit to the rehearsal room on Wednesday and once upon a time I’d have been carrying it all on the Tube; now I can get a taxi. I think about all those pop girlies a lot,” she tells me over video chat in the days before her second album, Prioritise Pleasure, hits the shelves. “I still find myself in so many scenarios that are quite humbling and I just think, do they ever have to do their make-up in a bog before going on stage? Because I seem to still be doing that. And I wonder when that will change.” Skinner, Tom (30 June 2022). "Self Esteem and Bimini to appear on 'Celebrity Gogglebox' ". NME . Retrieved 26 March 2023. A scene from Enron by Lucy Prebble at the Noël Coward theatre, London, 2010. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian But better still is the utterly brilliant “Mother”, a dark, rumbling dance banger with some whispered vocals that seems to scold a love interest (there’s a repeated mantra of “I am not your mother”) and demand respect (“I just want to be heard”). As Taylor and band writhe around the stage in dark red, Taylor in cowgirl hat, dancers in balaclavas, the overall effect is something akin to the transgression of Peaches. Self Esteem MK 3 might well be destined for the club – what a prospect.

a b c "Self Esteem: The bigger I get, the more threatening I become". BBC News. 20 July 2022 . Retrieved 7 March 2023. Snapes, Laura (1 March 2019). "Self Esteem: Compliments Please review – sly, covetous pop". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 20 March 2019. Her support acts all come from a community of like-minded, mostly queer artists. She has unofficially dubbed the dates “The Indie Survivors Tour” thanks to the inclusion of drag queen Ash Kenazi who also spent most of their twenties in jangle-pop three-piece Happyness. Jamieson, Sarah (22 October 2021). "Self Esteem – Prioritise Pleasure". DIY . Retrieved 29 October 2021. 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. [8] [9] The band paused working in 2017, [10] following an extensive tour to support their last album, owing to differing musical interests and Taylor feeling unfulfilled. [11] [4] 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. [12] [13] 2015–2020: The appearance of Self Esteem and Compliments Please [ edit ]Self Esteem - Wizardry (Live on The Graham Norton Show). Self Esteem. 17 October 2022. Archived from the original on 11 January 2023 . Retrieved 10 February 2023– via YouTube. Taylor has spoken about working regularly with a therapist for her mental health. [70] She has said that she used to lie about her age and say she was 25, and that it took her "a while to be proud" of breaking into the industry later in life. [4] Moore, Sam (13 October 2021). "Self Esteem shares new video for 'Moody' featuring Alistair Green". NME . Retrieved 13 November 2021. a b c d Dean, Jonathan (12 December 2021). "Self-Esteem: 'I used to say I was younger but I can't pretend I'm 31 any more' ". The Times . Retrieved 13 December 2021.

I'm obsessed with harmony and choral stuff, and a lot of what I write I think, this doesn't sound great now but when it's got four or five harmonies on it, it will. And, yeah, I proved myself right!" Taylor has emphasised the importance of her collaborators on Self Esteem, saying "I like to think of [Self Esteem] as a sort of collective of people...I've got this real, like, family which is something I've always dreamed of". [19] Current live band [ edit ]

Listening to Self Esteem songs, it does feel as though Taylor has the answers that a lot of people are searching for, particularly as we question what we prioritise in a post-Covid world. It is hard-won knowledge, though. As a child of the 80s, a woman and a pretty solid Libra, she “learned to survive by putting everyone else’s needs before mine”, which led to a lot of anger and frustration. “That caused quite a lot of difficult mental health journeys.” MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) LP: I’m the absolute queen of no. I rarely say yes, to the point where I worry about professional relationships because I only like to work on one or two things at a time. Americans are very different: there, the more you say no, the more they want you. It’s terrifying to realise that the only power you actually have as an artist is the power to walk away. And you can only start to do that when you feel safe. Embley, Jochan (12 September 2019). "Stormzy, Dave and Little Simz nominated for 2019 Q Awards". Evening Standard . Retrieved 21 July 2020. Kalia, Ammar (24 October 2021). " 'I'm addicted a bit to saying what I think': Self Esteem and Lucy Prebble in conversation". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 23 March 2023.

Though it is hard to imagine Rita Ora happily perched on a grimy toilet seat applying fake eyelashes, it is less so to imagine Taylor, who has been a staple of the toilet-venue circuit for more than a decade. Before she became Self Esteem (she chose the name for this brave new feeling she was experiencing), she was one half of indie-folk duo Slow Club. Self Esteem performs during All Points East Festival in Victoria Park, east London (Photo by Burak Cingi/Redferns) Wiegand, Chris (14 August 2023). " 'Raring to take on this challenge': musicians Jake Shears and Self Esteem to star in Cabaret". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 15 August 2023. Self Esteem talks 'Prioritise Pleasure' | 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW , retrieved 8 March 2023In a four-star review, NME wrote: “Assured and unapologetic, it’s charged with a dark, smirking wit that’s impossible to turn away from, and achieves an incredibly impressive feat: not only does Self Esteem detail the fear, uneasiness and anger of being a woman – keys clutched between our fists – but also manages to make us laugh at the sheer absurdity of being forced to navigate a world that has, quite unbelievably, normalised misogyny.” Songs are soaked in strings, choral gang vocals and grown-up pop-radio beats, while Taylor’s lyrics are so open and relatable, they recall Amy Winehouse. Listening to the album feels like getting a shot of authentic girl power, without the need for a label like that. And wow, it is fun.