SELF-ESTEEM

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With her 2019 statement debut Compliments Please, Taylor gave voice to the feelings of insecurity and misogyny-induced frustration that many of us face every day, emboldening a whole new audience with powerful, truth-telling lyricism. We’ve been trained to be submissive and secondary, and all I’m doing with this is going, What if we’re not? Next month she plays three nights at London’s Hammersmith Apollo; in July she will support Blur at Wembley Stadium. Approximately 43,000 tickets have been shifted for this sold-out victory lap UK tour, starting in Nottingham.

Taylor immediately outgrew the packed 2000-capacity venue, appearing atop a white staircase like a millennial Annie Lennox, before trading in power stances all night. 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. Praised for its fearless ability to tackle important issues around female autonomy, comparison culture and self-love, its intimate, confessional and witty lyricism and anthemic maximalist pop rhythms, the album was a catalyst for an unprecedented few years for Taylor. I’ve never made a secret of my love of theatre and I couldn’t be more excited about getting to make my stage debut as one of the greatest leads of all time,” said Taylor.

On Hobbies 2, she derides people who try to shame her for enjoying sex: " I'm only human / What are you? 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”).

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. In a five-star review, The Guardian reviewer Laura Snapes described the album as "remarkable" and "a rare big pop album after 18 months of comparatively diminutive offerings from headline female pop acts". They will join existing Cabaret stars Nathan Ives Moiba as Cliff Bradshaw, Beverley Klein as Fraulein Schneider and Teddy Kempner as Herr Schultz, with Emily Benjamin playing Sally Bowles at certain performances to 18 October, and then Nic Myers playing the alternate Sally from 19 October. Before she became Self Esteem (she chose the name for this brave new feeling she was experiencing), she was one half of indie-folk duo Slow Club.Her lyrics are unusual in that they are self-critical and confessional, embracing and exploring her own shortcomings and mistakes, as well as those of others. Taylor released her first music under the Self Esteem moniker, the single "Your Wife", in September 2017, with "OMG" as a B-side. They are wonderful, especially the measured control of that breakthrough hit, the alt-gospel ballad “The 345”, and the closing “The Best”, from 2019 debut Compliments Please, which proves Taylor’s pop chops were intact during her pre-fame years.