Nearly two years later, Taylor is a bona fide mainstream pop star. 2021’s second album Prioritise Pleasure wowed fans and critics alike; there have been Mercury and Brit nominations and regular TV appearances (including a turn on Channel Four’s Taskmaster); this summer, Self Esteem will open for Blur at Wembley Stadium. Shears said it was a “privilege and honour” to play the Emcee in John Kander and Fred Ebb’s musical and that it had been a lifelong dream of his. The Scissor Sisters singer has previously appeared in stage productions including Kinky Boots, on Broadway and in Los Angeles, and he wrote the lyrics for the musical Tammy Faye at the Almeida theatre in London in 2022. Taylor composed the music for the sexual assault drama Prima Facie, starring Jodie Comer, which was staged in London’s West End and transferred to Broadway. Rebecca Lucy Taylor AKA Self esteem stars as Sally Bowles in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club in London (Until 27 January 2024). Django Django – "Surface to Air" (Feat. Self Esteem) (Singles Going Steady)". PopMatters. 6 March 2018 . Retrieved 18 October 2022.

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.” Jamieson, Sarah (22 October 2021). "Self Esteem – Prioritise Pleasure". DIY . Retrieved 29 October 2021. Rebecca Lucy Taylor is better known for her stage moniker Self Esteem. She has been a professional musician for much of her life, and started building the foundations of her solo project, Self Esteem, around 2014. The first Self Esteem single, ‘Your Wife’, was released in 2017, and was followed by the debut album Compliments Please (2019). With the release of spoken-word anthem ‘I Do This All The Time’ in early 2021, Rebecca continued her meteoric rise as Self Esteem; her second solo album, Prioritise Pleasure, followed later in 2021 to critical acclaim, and charted at #11 on the UK Official Albums Chart Top 100. SELF ESTEEM is Rebecca’s first book. In 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.”

Singh, Surej (26 July 2022). "Mercury Prize 2022 shortlist revealed". NME . Retrieved 26 July 2022. Cabaret boasts music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Joe Masteroff, based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood. Moore, Sam (29 March 2022). "Self Esteem announces 2023 'I Tour This All The Time' UK and Ireland tour". NME . Retrieved 1 February 2023. Self Esteem: her forthcoming album’s title, Prioritise Pleasure, is a rallying cry against a society that has convinced its female population they should put other people’s needs before their own. Photograph: Olivia Richardson 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.

SE: It’s so exciting, because I still think we have only been given a certain type of woman for such a long time. In music, for instance, you either have to be a boss bitch or you’re singing a torch song, but that middle bit is the life I live in and no one really says it because popular art has to make such finite sense to people. In Succession and I Hate Suzie, you love someone who does something horrible, and that’s what life is like. I’m so excited by what those characters will do for other women on screen, since they really try to normalise the good and bad and everything in between. A warm and inclusive community is essential to the entity that is Self Esteem. “We’re all very obsessed with each other,” she says of her band. “It was always gonna be session musicians – but these people I’ve found, it’s magical.” 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.a b Hunt, El (20 October 2021). "Self Esteem – Prioritise Pleasure". NME . Retrieved 29 October 2021. International pop stars Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters) and Rebecca Lucy Taylor AKA Self Esteem are set to star as The Emcee and Sally Bowles, from 25 September 2023. a b Atkinson, Jessie (18 October 2021). "Album Review: Self Esteem – Prioritise Pleasure". Gigwise . Retrieved 29 October 2021. Lavin, Will (23 August 2021). "Self Esteem takes aim at the objectification of women on new single 'How Can I Help You' ". NME . Retrieved 22 March 2023.

Self Esteem singer Rebecca Lucy Taylor to be awarded honorary degree from University of Sheffield". www.sheffield.ac.uk. 17 July 2023 . Retrieved 18 July 2023.Beaumont-Thomas, Ben; Snapes, Laura (29 November 2021). "The 20 best songs of 2021". The Guardian . Retrieved 1 December 2021. Self Esteem: Rebecca Lucy Taylor on university honour". BBC News. 17 July 2023 . Retrieved 18 July 2023. 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. Leonard, Brian (6 October 2021). "Self Esteem is shining a musical spotlight on the experiences of queer women". Attitude.co.uk . Retrieved 30 October 2021.

Self Esteem – I Do This All The Time (Live on Later). BBC Music. 18 June 2021. Archived from the original on 11 January 2023 . Retrieved 10 February 2023– via YouTube. Orr, Gillian (16 July 2014). "Slow Club: 'We feel like a different band' ". The Independent . Retrieved 28 August 2018.

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!" Self Esteem - The 345 (Jools' Annual Hootenanny). BBC Music. 1 January 2023. Archived from the original on 11 January 2023 . Retrieved 10 February 2023– via YouTube. Certainly, her days of perching on a toilet wondering what Rita Ora would make of it all are numbered. Moore, Sam (13 October 2021). "Self Esteem shares new video for 'Moody' featuring Alistair Green". NME . Retrieved 13 November 2021. LP: The people working on Succession, particularly the men, are honestly some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. And it does make me think, is this show an expression of something that cannot be expressed in real life? People talk about how nasty Succession is, but I’ve recently been thinking more about how it’s actually a study in cowardice. That’s something we hardly ever see on screen. We’re so used to processing heroism that when you see cowardice, you can find it breathtaking. Not with Logan though – the reason he succeeds in constantly being in charge is maybe because he’s the only one who isn’t cowardly.