A Complicated Woman: South Yorkshire's Rebecca Taylor - with deep roots in Sheffield - celebrates turning 40
We take a look back over her incredible career so far
Rebecca Lucy Taylor has hit 40. By any measure, she has packed several lifetimes into four decades - and there's no sign of her slowing down.
The girl from Anston who sneaked underage into Sheffield's Leadmill, who failed her drama school auditions, who took blood as a phlebotomist and is now a Mercury Prize and Brit Award nominee, an author, a West End leading lady, a Greenpeace supporter, a podcast host and a musician admired by Madonna herself.
Rebecca is, as the title of her third album has it, a Complicated Woman - and she's crushing it.
So, as she reaches 40, let's take a deep dive into the remarkable career of Self Esteem, the stage name Rebecca Lucy Taylor chose for herself.
She was born in 1986, the daughter of a steelworks health and safety officer who played keyboards in the loft and a mother who favoured the violin.
Her great-grandad played football for Sheffield Wednesday - a connection that still burns bright.
Rebecca grew up in Anston, walking through Anston Stones Wood with her Walkman, listening to the Carpenters and the Beach Boys, pretending her conservatory floor was a stage and writing songs for her friends.
The young RLT was also a serious cricketer.
She played Under-16 Ladies cricket at county level, though she cheerfully admitted it was "not that hard to be a promising under-16 ladies cricketer in South Yorkshire."
Rebecca recalled deciding enough was enough when she had to face a hard cricket ball at 16.
At 18, she auditioned repeatedly for drama schools in London, but was rejected.
She remembered her father driving her down the M1, and "how sh*** it felt to be told no over and over."
After school, she briefly worked as a phlebotomist, which is as an unlikely apprenticeship for a future pop star as you can imagine.
Music was always there. At 16, she met Charles Watson on the Sheffield gig circuit.
In 2006, Taylor and Watson formed Slow Club, a duo that would spend the next 11 years recording studio albums and a covers collection, and supporting the likes of Mumford and Sons and Florence + The Machine - touring the country early on in an uncomfortable Peugeot 206.
Taylor felt confined, though.
Rebecca re-emerged as Self Esteem — a name she chose because she thought it sounded cool, not realising it would become, in her words, "a weirdly self-fulfilling thing."
Her first show was in 2017 in Margate. Her debut album, Compliments Please, arrived in 2019 — a bold, genre-bending manifesto of pop bangers, spoken-word interludes and gospel harmonies.
But it was her second album, Prioritise Pleasure, released in October 2021, that changed everything.
It topped best-of-the-year lists at The Guardian and The Sunday Times; "I Do This All The Time" was named the year's best single by The Guardian.
The album charted in the Top 20 and earned her a Mercury Prize nomination in 2022 and a Brit Award nomination for Best New Artist.
She thought it brilliant and hilarious for a 35-year-old woman to be nominated for Breakthrough Act - "The way that women are supposed to have a shelf life, or whatever – I just refuse that as a concept."
Her Glastonbury appearances became visual set-pieces, each more memorable than the last.
In 2019, she wore a mini-dress made from Boots Advantage cards. Yes, you read that correctly.
In 2022, she played the John Peel Stage in a Madonna-style conical bra shaped like the dome of Sheffield's Meadowhall shopping centre - a nod to Madonna's Jean-Paul Gaultier corset and a love letter to the area of her formative years.
In 2025, she strode on stage sporting a Sheffield Wednesday top, her great-grandfather's club.
Madonna noticed the English woman with a theatrical love of life and a Yorkshire accent.
After catching Self Esteem perform live at London's Duke of York's Theatre last year, the Queen of Pop called her "an incredible artist."
This South Yorkshire lass has always wanted to act.
After failing to get into drama school, she finally made her West End debut in 2023, playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse Theatre, opposite Jake Shears, of Scissor Sisters fame, as the Emcee.
Her run was extended due to demand.
In 2026, she returned to the West End in a revival of David Hare's Teeth 'n' Smiles at the Duke of York's Theatre, playing a role originated by Helen Mirren 50 years earlier - and writing music and lyrics for the production.
On TV, she has appeared on Taskmaster, The Jonathan Ross Show, Would I Lie To You?, Celebrity Bake Off (where she burned her crumpets) and The Late Late Show with James Corden.
Recently, she fronted a new BBC podcast, Mud, Sweat and Cheers, following non-league Sheffield FC through a season.
Her third album, A Complicated Woman, was released in April 2025 on Polydor.
Rebecca remains a complicated woman.
She has spoken openly about therapy and the long road to self-worth. She has made ceramic nudes of herself in her flat. She has said she cannot drive. She has called getting on the video wall in Meadowhall's Oasis food court a major goal.
So what next for a woman who has conquered music, theatre, television and podcasting?
More theatre looks likely: she has found a home on the West End stage and is writing music for productions.
Television presenting and documentary-making beckon; the Sheffield FC podcast seems a toe in the water.
Whatever she turns to, the woman who chose to call herself Self Esteem because she had none - and then spent the following years making the name her own - will bring the same warts-and-all honesty, the same straight-talking, the same refusal to be anything other than exactly who she is.