SELF-ESTEEM

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Part of embracing every facet of herself has been a focus on pleasure and what feels right for her in all aspects of her life; this, I suspect, is the thing that keeps her inbox flooded with messages from people asking for advice.

Brilliant recent single I Do This All the Time chronicles the thought process behind not wanting to go to somebody’s birthday drinks in a droll sprechgesang over a hypnotic beat – think Arab Strap’s The First Big Weekend but fuelled by social anxiety instead of youthful hedonism. In the video for her single I Do This All The Time, she is seen hugging herself while reciting the words: " Don't be intimidated by all the babies they have / Don't be embarrassed that all you've had is fun / Prioritise pleasure.The cast is completed by Rebecca Lisewski, Ela Lisondra, Nic Myers, Andy Rees, Toby Turpin and Patrick Wilden.

Taylor is playing Sally Bowles in the West End musical revival of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club (Playhouse Theatre) from 25 September 2023 to 20 January 2024 opposite Jake Shears as the Emcee.That is, except to pay tribute to her band for “believing in the shit I think of” – the tender embraces between the four of them throughout is genuinely moving – during a takedown of a year-old “sexist and classist” review that complained about the lack of production values in Self Esteem’s show (as if independent artists are expected to come equipped with pyro).

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”). I Do This All The Time" is a largely spoken-word track that contains a combination of critical self-talk ("Old habits die for a couple of weeks / and then I start doing them again"), pieces of advice ("Stop trying to have so many friends") and verbatim critical, sexist comments made to Taylor.SE: Spending time with you was so inspirational because you’ve never faltered in knowing that you’re really good at what you do. Now its contents are sung back by audiences in their thousands – as seen on Friday night in Nottingham, where Taylor kicked off the third leg of a sell-out tour that has snowballed due to sheer demand. The show is directed by Rebecca Frecknall, with set and costume design is by Tom Scutt with choreography by Julia Cheng. In September, Self Esteem headlined a tour-closing show – billed as the last of the Prioritise Pleasure era – at Don Valley Bowl in Sheffield. Prioritise Pleasure is the second studio album by the British musician Self Esteem, aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor, released on 22 October 2021.

LP: Theatre feels like something that you’d have to jump through quite a lot of hoops with, since there’s gatekeeping in it, whereas music strikes me as somewhere where you can purely express your craft without being overly controlled or corrected.Taylor is very funny when talking about her desperation to be liked – “I’ll be, like, ‘Do you want a tenner? It wasn’t a bad play, we just wanted to talk to each other,” Prebble laughs as she recounts the story.