Interview “I have massive ambitions – too big.” - Self Esteem talks her debut album

“It’s a weirdly difficult thing to spend your whole life as a creative person, just doing a version of yourself because you have to make sure the other person is happy with your output,” explains Rebecca Taylor – formally one half of Sheffield folk pop duo Slow Club. “I loved it, but it wasn’t fully me, and I underestimated how much that affected me over the years. I was way more ambitious than where we were getting to and you can’t push someone else to be like that,” she pauses for a beat, “apparently”.

Eventually calling time on the band that had been her life for the past decade, what started as an Instagram account (@selfesteemselfesteem) full of all-too-real observations has since grown into a full solo project with an album due for release via Fiction in March. The funny, fucked-off, screen-shotted iPhone notes bearing thoughts such as ‘no art show is worth bumping into you for’ that characterised those early posts still set the tone for Self Esteem’s brand of defiant pop, but now they’re surrounded by sparse, beat-driven backing and powerhouse vocals, too.

“All that gets me off is harmony and beat and I just was constantly saying that it needed to sound like ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ because I still think that’s one of the most unbelievable records ever,” she explains of the album – recorded at Margate’s Electric Beach studios sporadically over the past two years. “It feels meaty. It doesn’t feel girly, and I never wanted it to be sweet. I did too many years of that and I never felt comfortable with it.”