A frenzied clamour for tickets in March meant the production prompted one of the busiest sales since Liverpool’s Capital of Culture year in 2008
Self Esteem performance at BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend at Sefton Park, Liverpool. Photo by Colin Lane(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
Self Esteem said she is ‘proud’ to have been a part of one-woman theatre show Prima Facie, which is set to arrive at Liverpool’s Playhouse Theatre next year in a homecoming production for the city’s own Jodie Comer. Rebecca Lucy Taylor, who performs under the stage name Self Esteem, was one of the headline acts to appear at Radio 1’s Big Weekend festival.
The ECHO spoke to Rebecca ahead of her packed-out performance on the New Music Stage at the Sefton Park festival on Sunday, May 25. The Rotherham-born singer-songwriter spoke about her involvement in Prima Facie, the powerful one-woman show which was first performed at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End before transferring to the Golden Theatre in New York.
A frenzied clamour for tickets in March meant the production prompted one of the busiest ticket sales since Liverpool’s Capital of Culture year in 2008. Rebecca composed the original theatre soundtrack for Prima Facie, and she explained what a proud point in her career the production has been.
She said: “It carried on the message of [her second album] Prioritise Pleasure to be honest, and knowing that lives on with me but without me… I love that, it was incredible.
“I couldn’t believe how closely aligned to what I’m on about [Prima Facie] is and the way it’s helped people, and the way it’s a massive thing – huge numbers of ticket sales, I’m so proud of it. That’s the hit record, that’s breaking America for me.”
Self Esteem performance at BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend at Sefton Park, Liverpool. Photo by Colin Lane(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
She also spoke about her friendship with Jodie Comer, whose performance in Prima Facie saw her earn a Tony Award and an Olivier Award. Rebecca said: “Jodie and me are pretty similar. Our careers are very different but we are sort of going together through it, and how crazy it is and what we care about is really similar so it was a really beautiful partnership. I’m really excited for it.”
Self Esteem’s Big Weekend performance was undoubtedly one of the highlights of the event for festivalgoers, with her new A Complicated Woman live shows receiving a joyful reception from the Sefton Park crowds. It was a very different setting to her previous Liverpool show in 2019, which was held in Liverpool’s Central Library.
And despite being catapulted to the status of ‘global popstar’ over the course of her three solo albums, Rebecca admitted she still feels a degree of imposter syndrome at festivals like the Big Weekend, which feature a broad range of artists favoured by Radio 1’s young audience.
She said: “I’m on Radio 1 and stuff but I feel I am so different to the artists who play here, so I do think ‘what sort of person wants to see Tate McRae and me’, but it’s all the girlies and the gays.”
Self Esteem performance at BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend at Sefton Park, Liverpool. Photo by Colin Lane(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
The Liverpool show will have been the first opportunity many fans had to see live performances of tracks from A Complicated Woman, Self Esteem’s third album which was released on April 25. After a series of sold-out launch shows at London’s Duke of York’s Theatre, the star brought the show to Liverpool for the Big Weekend.
Speaking about the new album, Rebecca said: “It was so much pressure, in that it’s an album I was so scared to do, but I knew if you’d been with me this far you would love it and need it, in the way I needed to make it.
“It’s so weird because no one cared about anything I did and then suddenly Prioritise Pleasure changed everything and then starting to make music from that point was the oddest creative experience I’ve had and all I could do really was make this really dense album sort of saying ‘I don’t know what I think any more about anything’… which wasn’t a sure fire commercial success.
“Pop music never really says ‘just try to be alright’ – everything is always really binary and extreme and I was quite proud of how my album doesn’t say that. I had a friend who said it was going to be quite hard to sell the idea of ‘okay’. But I thought, I will, and I have.”
Self Esteem performance at BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend at Sefton Park, Liverpool. Photo by Colin Lane(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
She added: “In the music industry you do well and then you’ve got to go and break America or be in a Hollywood movie. Everything I ever dreamed of happened, which is quite an odd experience because of how rarely that happens in life.
“It was my petrol and my reason for being was to ‘make it’ and to sort of get there a bit, I can only think of as being a ‘headf***’. I’m grateful and excited for what’s next. I’m realising something I’ve always wanted to do and I love that. I’m actually in the moment when I’m performing, so perhaps that’s why I love it so much.”
Rebecca’s live shows are equal parts emotional and joyful – powerful and hard-hitting lyricism is interspersed with choreographed dance routines and inside jokes that everyone in the audience gets to feel a part of. Her shows are always a moving experience for gig-goers – and her Big Weekend performance was no different.
Casting your eyes over the crowd of any Self Esteem show, you’ll see fans crying, singing along to every single word and barking like dogs – because they all know that ‘nothing terrifies a man more than a woman who appears completely deranged’.
Self Esteem performance at BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend at Sefton Park, Liverpool. Photo by Colin Lane(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
But these uplifting, empowering and impassioned stage shows can sometimes carry a weight of responsibility for Rebecca, who understands the role her music has played in the lives of so many of her fans.
Speaking about her live shows, she said: “It heals me and it makes me feel loads less lonely but then it also feels like a pressure to provide that. When I did the launch shows I was just more emotional than I’ve ever been about anything I’ve ever done. The trans ruling came out that week and I could start crying now thinking about it.
“There’s something in my subconscious that doesn’t understand how I feel about it yet. I just keep saying it and doing it but I’m not sure what the toll is really. We’ll find out.
“I just felt like such an alien my whole life that it’s never not going to be joyful to share it with people and feel less alone.”
You can re-watch Self Esteem’s Big Weekend performance on BBC iPlayer here or listen on BBC Sounds here.