self esteem
For Rebecca Lucy Taylor, Self Esteem is both a stage name and a raison d’être. Meet the popstar giving a generation of women the confidence to be themselves
words: holly bullock
photography: ROSALINE SHAHNAVAZ
The decision to put Rebecca Lucy Taylor, otherwise known as Self Esteem, on our November cover was simple. Taylor’s breakthrough second record, , was named ’s album of last year, saw her enthral a packed-out John Peel stage at Glastonbury this summer and, most recently, brought her a Mercury Music Prize nomination. But it isn’t just her on-paper success that makes Taylor a worthy cover star, it’s how she makes us feel. It’s the way she can reduce crowds of women to tears with lyrics charting the struggles of her (and, as it turns out, our) teens and 20s, then bring us back up with dance-along melodies and powerful battle cries. She’s the woman we wish we’d heard on the radio when we were growing up, making us feel like we deserved to be heard, like our aspirations could – and should – be bigger than a wedding day. If we’d absorbed lyrics such as: “Don’t be intimidated by all the babies they have; Don’t be embarrassed that all you’ve had is fun,” the future might not have seemed so daunting. And if Taylor’s instruction to “make yourself the sun and not just cover with four young women-in-waiting she’ll inevitably have an impact on.
