World Cafe : World Cafe Phrases and Music Podcast : NPR

Think about a stadium pulsing with the power of tens of 1000’s of sports activities followers when a tune hits, and the place erupts.

That is the form of tune Rebecca Lucy Taylor, higher often known as Self Esteem, has all the time dreamt of writing.

“These moments the place music is used to intensify the strain,” she says.

Earlier this summer time, that imaginative and prescient landed. A tune from her new album, A Sophisticated Girl, scored the BBC’s opening montage for England’s Euro 2025 run. Plus, the Lionesses went on to safe the Girls’s Championship title.

The tune, “Focus Is Energy,” builds to a hovering and defiant chorus: “I should be right here.” It is a fateful choice for Taylor, amid her latest surge in success and the stress that follows it.

A Sophisticated Girl comes on the heels of a breakout 12 months for the English musician. Her 2021 album, Prioritise Pleasure, drew rave critiques and earned a 2022 Mercury Prize nomination.

“All of a sudden, everybody’s listening. I used to be promoting tickets, and I used to be form of this large deal within the U.Ok.,” she says. “If you wish to capitalize on that — and I am being actually binary and reductive — however, it’s important to broaden your sound.”

“Focus Is Energy” is simply the entry level. A Sophisticated Girl is irreverent and frank, constructed by an artist who spent years in a band the place she did not typically have full management. (Taylor break up from her band, Gradual Membership, in 2017.)

“Self Esteem has all the time been like taking my bra off on the finish of an extended day,” she says. “I simply do not overthink it. I simply do it.”

On this session, Taylor talks about making A Sophisticated Girl and what it feels prefer to take management of her profession after practically 15 years of hustle.

On working with a pop vocal producer

“I used to be in a band for therefore lengthy with any person else, and I simply could not get my manner. Self Esteem has been like taking my bra off on the finish of an extended day. I simply do not overthink it, I simply do it — the vocal supply or the vibe.

“Really, on this document, I attempted to work with a vocal producer simply out of curiosity, as a result of what do all the massive pop stars have once they make albums? There’s, like, particular tuning individuals and there is supply individuals. So I wished to see what that was like. What occurs when you may have one? So I attempted it, and I instantly hated it. I by no means did it once more. …

“This goes again to pushing via for mainstream success or not as a result of I see why a vocal coach serving to you ship in a sure manner may scientifically join with extra brains. I get it. However I simply can’t do it.”

On “The Curse” and sobriety

“I had the lyric — ‘If I am sober or drunk, it is nonetheless me in the course of the issue’ — as a result of I’ve carried out that. For 20 years now, I’ve gone sober. I’ve carried out AA. I’ve dedicated to it. I’ve discovered it harder. It is laborious to clarify, however it created extra issues than with the ability to average and simply have the ability to do what everybody else is doing round me. Then, in fact, there’s the chance it may well go too far.

“Me and all my mates are the identical. I’ve a couple of mates which might be actually efficiently sober and it really works for them. That is nice. I really feel like we hear these tales, and we hear the tales of, like, ‘Cheers to the weekend. Let’s get effed up.’ However what most of us are working towards is attempting to efficiently sit within the center.

“It is simply my fact. The extra trustworthy I’m about myself, the freer I really feel. … I believe lots of people have actually linked to it.”

On calling the album A Sophisticated Girl

“I had simply written down in my telephone, ‘I am such an advanced lady.’ It nearly amuses me to say that as a result of I am not. I am essentially the most fundamental lady experiencing life like each lady with the hand I have been dealt, which is a reasonably privileged one.

“I am reacting completely fairly to the system, however it nonetheless registers as difficult to different individuals. I do not make sense. … It is simply such a helpful phrase, however it may be weaponized. It may be used to gloss over issues, as a substitute of interrogate them. It is an incredible phrase.

“I’ve spent so lengthy in my life attempting to be like all people else, or this picture-perfect ending. It was like I used to be popping out as somebody who cannot do this.”

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The net story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and reserving coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.