Rebecca Lucy Taylor (born 15 October 1986), also known professionally as Self Esteem, is an English musician and actress. First known as one half of the band Slow Club, she launched a solo career as Self Esteem with the single "Your Wife" in 2017, followed by the studio albums Compliments Please in 2019, Prioritise Pleasure in 2021 and A Complicated Woman in 2025. A multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter and theatre composer, she won the 2021 BBC Music Introducing Artist of the Year Award and achieved a nomination for the Mercury Prize in 2022 with Prioritise Pleasure.

As an actress, Taylor has performed on stage and appeared in television series like I Hate Suzie and Smothered. From September 2023 to March 2024 she performed the lead role of Sally Bowles in the West End production of Cabaret, and is currently starring in the West End revival of Teeth 'n' Smiles.

Early life Taylor was born and grew up in Rotherham, England. Her father was a health and safety advisor and an amateur musician in a band, and her mother was a secretary. She attended Wales High School in Rotherham where she credits music teacher Antony Wright with teaching her to sing. Her main interests as a child were music, dance and cricket and she has described herself as a "choir nerd" while at school.

Career 2006–2017: music career before Self Esteem

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. The band paused working in 2017, following an extensive tour to support their last album, owing to differing musical interests and Taylor feeling unfulfilled. 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.

2015–2020: The appearance of Self Esteem and Compliments Please

Taylor started posting art and short notes on Instagram under the name Self Esteem in 2015. Prior to releasing music under the name, she used Self Esteem for a range of artistic projects including an exhibition of paintings and prints, and short films. Speaking about her stage name, Taylor has said she decided on the name around six years before she started using it, and that "I wanted to call it Sex Appeal or Self Esteem... 'cause band names are bad, like, there's no good ones. But I probably should have just called it Rebecca Lucy Taylor". A big fan of Queen, she based her logo on Freddie Mercury's signature.

Taylor was inspired with the confidence to pursue a solo career after watching RuPaul's Drag Race – "that whole ethos of not being ashamed to be confident or brilliant". She credits Jamie T with encouraging her to release her music after she shared some of her early solo work with him; his 2016 album Trick ends with a track called "Self Esteem". Taylor released her first music under the Self Esteem moniker, the single "Your Wife", in September 2017, with "OMG" as a B-side. The track was released on Kick + Clap, a label run by Django Django member Dave MacLean. Her first live show as Self Esteem was in October 2017 at Margate Arts Club. Taylor went on to feature on the Django Django track "Surface to Air", which appeared on the band's 2018 album Marble Skies.

Tracks for the Self Esteem debut album Compliments Please were recorded from January to September 2018, and Taylor signed a solo deal with Fiction Records in April 2018. During the period of recording she played live at Latitude, Tramlines and a sold out show at Omeara Theatre London, followed by an eight-show UK tour in autumn 2018. The first single "Wrestling" was released in July 2018 followed by "Rollout" in September 2018, "The Best" in January 2019 and "Girl Crush" in February 2019. Compliments Please was released on 1 March 2019 on Fiction Records. It was well received critically, with an average rating of 80/100 according to Metacritic. A deluxe version was released in October 2019 with an additional track "Rooms". In March 2019 Self Esteem completed an 11-date UK tour in support of the album release and played at UK festivals including Glastonbury, British Summer Time and Latitude. In December 2019 she released a standalone single, "All I Want for Christmas Is a Work Email", recorded at Abbey Road Studios.

On 1 May 2020, Self Esteem released the Cuddles Please EP, with stripped down versions of tracks from Compliments Please – "Favourite Problem", "The Best" and "In Time" – along with a cover of "Miami Memory" by Alex Cameron. The EP features Neighbourhood Voices, a Sheffield-based upper voices choir. In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 she organised an online all-female festival, Pxssy Pandemique, to raise money for Women's Aid.

2021–2023: Prioritise Pleasure

Much of the Self Esteem second album was written before the COVID-19 pandemic that caused intermittent public health restrictions in the UK from March 2020 onwards. These restrictions delayed its recording and release. The record was co-written, recorded and produced with Johan Hugo Karlberg, the producer who also worked on Compliments Please.

The first single from the album, "I Do This All the Time" was released in April 2021. Largely spoken word, and consequently compared to Baz Luhrmann's "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)", Taylor said that "I went into this studio in Sheffield just to experiment, and I ended up building the backing track up, and just reading out my iPhone notes in a row".

The single was a huge critical and commercial success, and was praised by Tracey Thorn and by Jack Antonoff. It represented Taylor's first big music industry breakthrough. In a 2021 interview she said that she had previously lied about her age and said she was 25, and that it took her "a while to be proud" of breaking into the industry in her thirties.

In July, she released the title track and announced that the record, Prioritise Pleasure, would coincide with a UK tour in October of the same year. In August, Self Esteem released the third single, "How Can I Help You". Taylor directed the music videos for those singles, filming all three at the Almeida Theatre. In September, the single "Moody" was released. The video for "Moody" was directed by Louise Bhose and features comedian Alistair Green alongside Taylor. In October, Self Esteem released "You Forever", the final single preceding the album.

Prioritise Pleasure was released on 22 October 2021. The UK Self Esteem tour started on 6 November 2021 in Edinburgh.

The Guardian, The Sunday Times and Gigwise ranked Prioritise Pleasure as the best album of 2021. NME ranked the album as the fourth best of 2021. The Guardian named "I Do This All The Time" as the best song of 2021.

During 2022 Self Esteem played a sold-out Prioritise Pleasure tour and they also played 30 festivals. Taylor composed the soundtrack for the West End Production of Suzie Miller's play Prima Facie starring Jodie Comer, which was released on 14 June 2022. She described her connection with the production by saying the play "deals with similar issues" as Prioritise Pleasure, including heartbreak, sexism and misogyny. Prima Facie was awarded Best New Play at the 2023 Laurence Olivier Awards. In December 2022 she voiced the Christmas Campaign for Solace Women's Aid - 7 Years of Christmas. The campaign went on to win several awards and raise over 70,000 for the charity.

The 2023 live tour in support of Prioritise Pleasure, the I Tour This All The Time tour, was announced in March 2022 and originally consisted of 11 dates. Due to popularity of ticket sales, another 10 dates were added to the final tour which sold out before it commenced in February 2023. The tour played to 43,000 people including three nights at London's Eventim Apollo, three nights at Manchester's Albert Hall, and two nights at Taylor's home town O2 Academy Sheffield. During the UK tour Self Esteem performed two new, unreleased songs – "Mother" and "Love Second Music First".

Self Esteem played UK festivals in summer 2023 including Neighbourhood Weekender, Green Man, Bristol Sounds, Standon Calling, Parklife and Truck, and supported Blur at their Wembley Stadium gig on 8 July. On 21 July, Taylor performed at the opening night of the BBC Proms festival in Sage Gateshead, the BBC's first outside of London. Her performance consisted of 12 songs from her two solo albums, plus a cover of George Michael's "Praying for Time". The tracks were arranged for the Royal Northern Sinfonia by Robert Ames, who also served as conductor, and Matt Rogers. In September, Self Esteem headlined a tour-closing show – billed as the last of the Prioritise Pleasure era – at Don Valley Bowl in Sheffield.

A number of standalone songs, many collaborations, were released by Self Esteem during 2023. In February, Django Django released "Complete Me" which features Self Esteem on vocals, from their album Off Planet. In June, Self Esteem released an acoustic cover of "You Are So Beautiful", originally written and recorded by Billy Preston and popularised by Joe Cocker. With Craig Armstrong, Taylor recorded a cover of "Black Eyed Dog" for the Nick Drake covers compilation album, The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs of Nick Drake, released in July 2023. Taylor was also one of the singers on the unofficial anthem for the England Women's World Cup team, "Call Me a Lioness".

2025: A Complicated Woman

Taylor spent 2024 in the studio recording her third Self Esteem album, during which several standalone singles and collaborations were released as singles. She featured on a Becky Hill track "True Colours" from the 2024 album Believe Me Now? In June she released "Big Man" with South African artist Moonchild Sanelly. In September "Love Second Music First" - a song first performed on the latter dates of the Prioritise Pleasure tour - was released as a b-side to "Big Man". She also released a cover of "You Can Get It If You Really Want", recorded for the soundtrack to the BBC series This Town.

In an interview for the podcast series Talk Art in July 2022, Taylor discussed the demo for a new song that contains the refrain "I can't be arsed", a phrase also included in the video for "Moody", stating that "essentially, album three has begun now". Speaking about the budget constraints she has faced as a new artist, she has said that "I'm so glad I haven't achieved what I want to achieve quite yet, because imagine if I had access to an orchestra or a full choir. That's what excites me about album three". In September 2024, Taylor was reported as saying that her third album was 70% complete.

On 21 January 2025, Self Esteem released a new track "Focus Is Power" and announced her new album A Complicated Woman, released on 25 April 2025. "Focus Is Power" was originally written by Taylor during the coronavirus pandemic; the released version features House Gospel Choir and has co-writing credits for Johan Hugo, Taylor's long time collaborator, and Pale Jay. A Complicated Woman is Self Esteem's major label debut, released on Polydor. Also in 2025, she appeared in the video for Sparks single "Porcupine".

Style and influences