For Self Esteem – AKA Rebecca Lucy Taylor – Glastonbury is where it all began, sort of. “It was Gary Lightbody!” she told Alexis Petridis in the second of the Guardian’s onstage interviews with musicians on the William’s Green stage. “I was at school, he was in some of the [Glastonbury] footage and he did a Bright Eyes cover.” She made a new musical discovery and was inspired to set off down her own path as a musician.
It’s been a long one: after a decade in the indie duo Slow Club, Taylor quit to start Self Esteem. She released her debut solo album, Compliments Please, in 2019 to quiet acclaim, but it wasn’t until last year’s bold, ruthlessly self-examining Prioritise Pleasure that the Self Esteem phenomenon truly kicked off. It was the Guardian’s album of the year, and her live shows – which she describes, brilliantly, as “a kind of horrible church” – have near enough become sites of pilgrimages, particularly for adult pop fans who want to hear their real-life experiences reflected back at them.
