Self Esteem hints at Glastonbury team-up with Rod Stewart "if he gave me a ring"

"I’ve been using this image of Rod lately for memes… I’m a big Rod head," she tells me, gleefully. "I’ve seen him live, but I always thought, if he gave me a ring and said, 'put some high white stilettos on and be my backing singer', I’d do it!"

We meet at her record company offices in London on a glorious day, although, now at the tail end of the campaign for her latest album A Complicated Woman, she has been cooped up inside and merely able to look over the revellers in buzzy King Cross. Casually dressed in a vintage Levi’s jacket, her long blonde hair often played with for a touch of self-soothing, she’s gradually melting into the sofa, sustaining herself with energy drinks, clearly exhausted from a day – and many weeks before that – of talking to people like me.

In fact, the only reason I’ve been able to shoehorn myself in is because she’s promoting the sustainability movement, “I Came by Train”, where she and other Glasto stars pledge to get themselves to Worthy Farm by rail instead of road. “They asked me to do a video for socials, and I went, ‘Choo, choo! It’s me! I’m going to Glastonbury by train because it’s 67 per cent less polluting for the environment!’” she shakes her head in mock despair. “So now everyone just comments ‘choo-choo!’” And yet, she has managed to get the message across, albeit in her own inimitable style… would I be writing about it if it wasn’t wrapped in typical Self Esteem self-effacement?

Maybe it’s the Yorkshire sense of humour, maybe it’s the years upon years of struggling at the indie end of the music business as part of Sheffield band Slow Club, or maybe it’s just that awkward millennial blend of ambition, emotional armour, and existential dread, but somehow, we’ve arrived at a moment where 38- year-old Taylor and her on-stage moniker now find themselves hovering somewhere around success. “I definitely don’t see myself as famous at all,” she says. “But then if I said something offhand about a political issue, it might make some news and I might get a load of grief. So that’s a really weird place to be in because I’m just Becky from Anston.”

She’s strutted many stages, from London’s West End to Glasto’s John Peel Stage (now Woodsies) – maybe even in Anston (a village just outside Sheffield) – but for newcomers, how would she pitch herself? “Number one, I wouldn’t pitch. I can’t be bothered. I’d be like, ‘come or not, I don’t care.’” She leans thoughtfully back into the sofa, “But I call Self Esteem ‘salad and chips’, right? I’m obsessed with pop culture, pop music, pop stars, all the feminine tropes that you can think of – I love all that…” I’m assuming this is the chips, “…but then I’m also obsessed with reality and the truth and the horribleness of being alive and undercutting it all,” and this the less palatable salad.

Self Esteem is an artist who channels the frustrations and ridiculousness of modern existence –particularly that of a woman –into music that’s designed to both provoke and be danced to. Her shows are performance pieces – silly, bombastic and affecting all at once. Please note the aforementioned Glasto performance where she wore a take on Madonna’s infamous conical bra, only in the form of the glass domes of Sheffield’s Meadowhall shopping centre. “That was more than just silly, because it’s territorial and it tells you where I’m from. It opened in 1990 and malls were American, exciting, and I’d never left the country… I’d barely left the village. It was a window into show business, celebrity, shiny things and aspiration.”

Talking of aspiration, there’s the small matter of recently starring as Sally Bowles in the 2023 London production of Cabaret, an experience that resonated with her in a few ways. “Sally wants to do whatever she wants. She’s partying, she’s crazy, she’s living outside of the norm. The idea of having a baby, a husband and a quiet life – peace and security – she has written that off, and so she’s doubling down on that other side of herself. I mean, if that ain’t me!”

With Cabaret successfully under her garter, she doubled down on board-treading with a five-night theatrical presentation of her new album at London’s Duke of York’s Theatre, where there was a notable attendee. “I was told Madonna might be coming, but I didn’t want to know. So I got on with the show, and then halfway through, all the lights went down and I could see her, and I thought, ‘OK, great.’” Just ok, great? “The way I thrive under pressure is masochistic. Afterwards I thought, ‘F**k… she was there?!’”

Such nonchalance, bolshiness and self-doubt can be heard in her 2021 breakthrough second album Prioritise Pleasure, particularly lead single I Do This All the Time: “All you need to do, darling, is fit in that little dress of yours; If you weren’t doing this, you’d be working in McDonald’s…” I put it to her that her compositions – which cover imposter syndrome, body issues and the patriarchy – are as much about a generational issue, specifically millennials, as they are feminist, switching between existential angst and trying to be the One in Charge. “Yeah, I don’t think they’re exclusively about being a woman. It’s sort of the curse of our generation, because we’re supposed to be the adults in the room now, and it just doesn’t feel like it. I feel like a big baby… I can’t believe I’m not 15!”

And yet, this week, here she is leading a sizeable creative team to Somerset (by train). “It’s so wonderful to give opportunities to other people,” she says, “and to build up this family around yourself. It was lonely for a very long time, and now it’s quite joyful.” Her 2022 and 2025 Glastonbury slots will bookend the intervening years, which have seen a lot of creative and professional fulfilment. Is she planning anything special for her performance? “I don’t have an idea this year. I’m going to do my theatre show, and I’m going to be in those costumes, but I’m not going to subvert it. You’ll see another fun costume when I’ve got an idea. I’m not going to force it, you know?”

It sounds as if the new thing she’s going to be bringing to the festival this year is a sense of agency. “I can create my own destiny now,” she agrees. “If the world is saying, ‘You shouldn’t look like that’, I [still] go through the emotions of embarrassment or shame… and then I’m like, oh, hang on a minute, I make the rules now. And so Self Esteem is mostly me just going through that circle, over and over.”

With agency comes knowing your own worth. What if Rod Stewart did ask her to join him on stage this year? “Yeah – I mean – if there’s enough time to rehearse. And if I can source my own heels and mini skirt.” After years of uphill struggles it finally feels as if she’s on the right track. Choo-choo indeed – and full steam ahead for the Park Stage on Friday.

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