World Cafe : World Cafe Phrases and Music Podcast : NPR

Think about a stadium pulsing with the power of tens of hundreds of sports activities followers when a music hits, and the place erupts.

That is the form of music Rebecca Lucy Taylor, higher often called Self Esteem, has all the time dreamt of writing.

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

Earlier this summer season, that imaginative and prescient landed. A music from her new album, A Sophisticated Lady, 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 music, “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 strain that follows it.

A Sophisticated Lady comes on the heels of a breakout yr for the English musician. Her 2021 album, Prioritise Pleasure, drew rave evaluations and earned a 2022 Mercury Prize nomination.

“Out of the blue, everybody’s listening. I used to be promoting tickets, and I used to be form of this massive deal within the U.Okay.,” she says. “If you wish to capitalize on that — and I am being actually binary and reductive — however, you must broaden your sound.”

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

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

On this session, Taylor talks about making A Sophisticated Lady 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 means. Self Esteem has been like taking my bra off on the finish of a protracted day. I simply do not overthink it, I simply do it — the vocal supply or the vibe.

“Truly, on this report, I attempted to work with a vocal producer simply out of curiosity, as a result of what do all the massive pop stars have after 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 might 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 means would possibly 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 midst of the issue’ — as a result of I’ve accomplished that. For 20 years now, I’ve gone sober. I’ve accomplished AA. I’ve dedicated to it. I’ve discovered it tougher. It is onerous to elucidate, however it created extra issues than having the ability to reasonable and simply be capable to do what everybody else is doing round me. Then, in fact, there’s the chance it may go too far.

“Me and all my associates are the identical. I’ve a couple of associates which can 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 training is attempting to efficiently sit within the center.

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

On calling the album A Sophisticated Lady

“I had simply written down in my telephone, ‘I am such an advanced girl.’ It nearly amuses me to say that as a result of I am not. I am probably the most fundamental girl experiencing life like each girl 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 sophisticated 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 a fantastic 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 try this.”

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The online 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.