There were moments I considered giving up

“Please be in a hurry by the most confusing contestant of the world games and bakes failure, self -esteem!”

This is how Rebecca Lucy Taylor, also known as the famous pop singer of self -esteem, presents himself to the stage at the Teatro del Duque de York in London.

It is a typically irrevable comment, an example of the dry target he uses to sweeten the sincerity and anger of his music.

“You can take photos and videos,” continues the voice out of the stage, “because it avoids all the help you can get.”

That is also strictly ironic.

Three years ago, Taylor launched his second album, Prioritize Pleasure, a manifesto that delays in the body for the female highway that was erred to society’s expectations while recognizing his own deficiencies (“Texting You in mental healing) seems.

After 10 years in the independent medium -sized band Slow Club, the album promoted it to unknown kingdoms.

There were magazine covers, nominations for the Mercury Award and the Brit Awards, a leading role on the stage in Cabaret, a support slot with Adele and, yes, an appearance on the celebrity oven, where, unfortunately, its tubes burned.

“The week that prioritizes pleasure came out, my whole life changed,” he reflects.

“It is not financial or in terms of fame, but it is as if there was a knot in my stomach that unleashed.

“Then everyone said:” Well, can you do that again, please? “

Taylor scared in two to track, a complicated woman, who comes on Friday.

After playing it live for the first time at the West End on Wednesday, it describes the gestation of the album as “horrible”, “lonely” and “painful.”

“He simply felt stressful to execute what was in my head,” he explains in a telephone interview the next morning.

“I was thinking so big, but I still have no access to the resources I need to do it as big as I would like.”

Part of the problem was a punishing time limit, but self -imposed.

“The music industry is like” you have 10 minutes, then you are about that someone else will take your place, “he explains.

“So I felt I had no choice [but to commit to another record] If I wanted to build on what I had done.

“But as painful as it was and as dark as it got, the second one that I am back on stage, I say,” Oh, that’s why I love it. “

She has a new album, has also created a daring and guided theatrical experience.

He is set in a scarce recreation of the community center where Becky, eight years old from Rotherham, learned to play dance.

“You just wanted to sing / you didn’t know what that would bring“, Recalls an older and more cynical version of that child, while evaluating his life at the age of 38.

“This really is all there, and that is what you have to feel comfortable.”

When the show opens, 10 dancers align on both sides of it, dressed in austere attire that remember the story of The Handmaid.

Initially, their movements are rigid and restricted, but, as Taylor describes suffocating relationships with emotionally attacked men, they begin to hit and shake their bodies.

“We start in that world where we are chained, and then we exorcise it,” Taylor explains.

“On the course of the show, everything is triggered and all end up being thematic instead of complying with these social norms.”

A residence in the theater of four nights is an unusual way to launch an album. The audience is not familiar with most songs, and nobody is sure of absorbing acting carefully, or singing and dancing.

Several times, laughter extends through the theater when the most approaches to the singer came home. The next morning, he is not very sure what to do with the reaction.

“Every time people laugh, my heart sinks,” she says. “But then I’m like, the letters are fun, right?

“And I love changing laughter in emotion. It seems that people laugh because it’s uncomfortable.”

In the end, the members of the audience reflect the narrative on stage. Shaking their discomfort, they get up from their seats and begin to make an almighty racket.

Music becomes a soundtrack of solidarity, which, which perspires, was Taylor’s intention.

A complicated woman could be as shear and powerful as her predecessor, but the melodies were designed for stages.

“Do you remember the elbow song one day like this?” She asks. “The one who goes”Throw those wii-iide curtains“

“I get angry at that song when it comes out and, honestly, I play it again and again in the studio and said:” I want to do this. “

“I was very inspired to try to get to the World Cup assembly. That is a genre of music that I really enjoy.”

That is just half of history, thought. The album is about capturing the complex and contradictory impulses of a woman in her 30 years.

The recent single 69, for example, is a song of the house that Taylor speaks with the frankness about his sex life. Imagine that Madonna justifies my love, if she were Reaxly Be honest.

“It’s an idea that I had for centuries, or list sexual positions and write them down, so that is not a gray area [for prospective partners]”The singer laughs.

“But there is a more political element, that women are still not say what they are in the bedroom. And I say, I can’t bear this. Please, let us enjoy having sex.

“He will not win exactly an IVOR Novello Award for the lyrics, but I think he is in the album with more emotional and deep moments.”

These moments include the curse, an exciting ballad about the use of alcohol to opillate its anxiety, which is possible that the best self -esteem song has written.

His personal favorite, however, is called in sight. A collaboration with South African musician Moonchild Sanelly, is an answer to the criticisms that both received for saying what they think.

“The world says who I am, but I thought I knew all these years,“Sanelly says in a semi-improvised rap.

“I shrunk to keep peace, hoping not shake my purpose. “

It is a feeling that Taylor recognized immediately.

As the emotion was based on prioritizing pleasure in 2021, it began to receive “unpleasant messages” on social networks, which shook it.

“I was very surprised the first time I received a complaint, because nobody has been a leg that was well about what I am doing,” she says.

“People say you should ignore it, but if you get used to a wedding and had a good day and a person calls you a [expletive]Who would you go home thinking? It is only human nature. “

Pootoly, critics had its price.

“There were times when I considered to give up, which surprised me because I have been this challenging and angry thing for so long,” she says.

“But in recent years, especially with the world as it is, I have definitely had feelings to protect and shut up.

“That is the saddest part of the album, really. But I found a path.

“And if I can, then I hope the rest of the world can also, you know?”

That realization is the connection fabric of a complicated woman.

Life is never easy, she says. No one is really satisfied. Relationships are hard work. You can’t please everyone. But it’s fine. Are you OK. Trust your instinct.

She summarizes it in Focus Is Power, Hero Aloft for the sound of an Gospel choir: “And now I see it clear with each adjustment of each year / I deserve to be here. “

On the London stage, a capella sings those final lines with its dancers and backup singers, arms wrapped together in an exhibition of female solidarity.

It is a cathartic moment after the bruise process of assembling the album.

“There is so much joy in being a woman and being yourself can be beautiful,” she says. “You just have to find a way to do it.”

With that, she leaves to make adjustments for the second night of the program. After that, you have to find a way to climb the production of the West End for a tour of the United Kingdom.

“I will do what I can to continue, but it is a great risk because there are very few income of anything else,” she says.

Ultimately, he thought, his ambition is not motionless.

“I want to do 20 albums, I want to do larger theater shows,” she says.

“Or, of course, it would be useful if I could ‘cross’ because everything becomes easier when you have more resources.

“But last night I thought:” Hell Bloody, you did what you set out to do. “So I’m fine.”