Self Esteem

In the second of the Guardian's onstage interviews from the festival, Rebecca Lucy Taylor reflects on her journey from one half of indie outfit Slow Club to ...

I want to execute it to its full potential.” “I took a job as a fairy in a panto,” she explained. It’s not a good way to make art, I don’t think.” Part of that trademark comes from Taylor’s frank lyricism about her own flaws – and the things that men have told her she is. “It’s interesting going into the next bit – this is my day in the sun where there will be more yesses than noes and I need to make the most of that. And I think it’s because in my life, I never say what I mean … In songs, people don’t ask me what it’s about, and that safety makes me say what I mean and that’s what I get out of it. “I was at school, he was in some of the [Glastonbury] footage and he did a Bright Eyes cover.” She made a new musical discovery and was inspired to set off down her own path as a musician. Negative experiences with sound engineers had prompted her to hire her own technicians, “which means I take home less money … It’s so unregulated and you have to spend a lot of money to make sure you’re gonna be alright. “It’s easy to go, ‘I’m gonna keep it safe and easy and that will keep me liked’.” It’s hard being from Rotherham and saying this but I’m an artist, I wake up every day and want to make art. At first, though, said Taylor, she was “too scared to say I was gonna go solo. “Being a woman, I feel like I’m asking too much, I’m attention-seeking,” she said. It was the Guardian’s album of the year, and her live shows – which she describes, brilliantly, as “a kind of horrible church” – have near enough become sites of pilgrimages, particularly for adult pop fans who want to hear their real-life experiences reflected back at them.