From the stark statements about autonomy and desire that punctuate her songs, to the warts-and-all reflections she throws out in conversation, there’s always been a rare, overriding sense of honesty to everything Self Esteem approaches.

But the truth isn’t always straightforward – something the South Yorkshire artist, born Rebecca Lucy Taylor, explores in depth on her new album, the aptly titled A Complicated Woman.

It arrives three-and-a-half years after Prioritise Pleasure, her lauded, Mercury Prize-nominated second album, which catapulted her from an underground favourite to the kind of groundbreaking star deemed worthy of an honorary doctorate – as she was in 2023, from the University of Sheffield.

Of course, the recognition and validation was a long time coming. Rebecca had previously spent over a decade in the music business as one-half of indie duo Slow Club – an experience that ultimately left her feeling stifled creatively. She embarked on her own blazingly bold pop journey with Compliments Please in 2019, but it wasn’t until the release of her second LP that she really made her mark as Self Esteem.

“On the edge of putting Prioritise Pleasure out, I’d looked into training to become a keep-fit instructor,” Rebecca reveals. “But I was just like, ‘Fuck it. One last record – and then I’m going to change the goalposts in my life, and do something else.’

“Of course, that’s when it all went well, and I was drawn back in!” she adds. “So this is my third album, but it is very much like the difficult second album bollocks…”

Although she was overjoyed to see that her work – in which life-affirming pop meets drag and musical theatre flourishes – had finally found the community of people it was intended for, she admits that the success of Prioritise Pleasure added yet another level of stress when she was approaching the follow-up.

“There was a huge part of me that was like, ‘Right, I’ve got to make a very palatable, concentrated pop record that will get on playlists and TikTok,’” she reflects. “It was this businesswoman-brain – like, ‘That will make you the most money. That will make you the safest. That will secure your future a bit more.’

“Obviously I couldn’t do that, and I never would!” she laughs. “But I managed to stress myself out a lot, that I wasn’t making a ‘crossover hit’. But what does that mean, anyway? It’s all bollocks, really!”

Dealing with burnout in the wake of Prioritise Pleasure, Rebecca turned to other outlets of expression. She re-embraced her long-time love for acting with roles in the Sky Comedy series Smothered and the 2024 film Layla, in addition to a West End run as Sally Bowles in the multi-Olivier Award-winning production of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club.

But when it came time to start writing A Complicated Woman – which deals with her complex feelings around her own success – Rebecca admits she “could’ve done with like three years off”, and says that a lot of the process was done “through gritted teeth”.

“But I’m proud of how dense and complicated it is – because that’s how I was feeling,” she resumes. “The albums are often fraught with self-doubt and introspection and stress. But then, once I’m back playing them, the performing of them heals me of the making of them.”

With lyrics that can take the form of playful yet profound pep talks, Self Esteem’s work is often labelled ‘empowering pop’. But the new album’s opening track, ‘I Do And I Don’t Care’, finds her asking: “If I’m so empowered, why am I such a coward?”

“Anyone who’s sort of visible gets it, but women really get labelled,” she notes. “And then, everything you do, you’re expected to be this consistent thing. I struggled with that. I feel very different to what I used to feel like – and some of what I used to feel like is committed to record.

“Body positivity stuff can be very toxic, I think, on both ends of the spectrum,” she continues. “I got in a real tangle with myself, physically. I didn’t want to be on camera. I didn’t like it. And I was like, ‘Fuck – everyone thinks I’m this confident thing, that should be looked up to in that department.’ I felt like such a fraud.”

For Rebecca, it felt important to “find a way to be honest” about those feelings.

“The more people who do that, the better,” she reckons. “To be like, ‘We’re trying to get to this positive place – but let’s also give ourselves grace if we can’t.’ Because I’m fighting millennia of misogyny that’s inside me too. So I felt so upset with myself for being complicit within the system, every time I’d look in the mirror and go, ‘Ugh, you look ugly...’

“I actually think you can make more headway, and more growth, if you are honest about how things aren’t binary,” she adds. “As a society, I think we all need to be a bit more lenient on getting things wrong.”

Does she feel society – and the music industry in particular – is getting any better at understanding and accepting ‘complicated women’?

“I don’t know,” she muses. “I felt like it was, a few years ago. But obviously the world is turning in this way again, where misogyny is quite fashionable for some types of people.”

Tying in with that, there appears to be a renewed focus on “being pretty and thin” in mainstream pop once again.

“There’s been a few successful female artists that look really ‘good’ – and the music industry’s like, ‘Phew! Thank God for that!’” Rebecca says of the current pop landscape. “And I say ‘good’, but I mean that they’re hitting the male gaze really well.

“So we’ll see,” she continues. “It felt like a diverse, inclusive page was turning a few years ago. This might be me being glass-half-empty, but it feels like it’s gone back a little bit. But that doesn’t mean we should stop. We should keep fighting, everyday. Any bit of resilience and resistance is good.”

Clearly, Self Esteem’s rebellious streak has not been dulled by her success. She’s forthright and defiant on tracks like ‘Mother’ and ‘69’ (“My parents hate that one, but I’m very proud of it!” she says of the latter) – while the voices of like-minded boundary-pushers, including musicians Nadine Shah and  Moonchild Sanelly, and American drag queen Meatball, pop up throughout the album.

But A Complicated Woman ultimately finds Self Esteem looking inwards for peace and contentment, to what she repeatedly refers to on the album as ‘The Deep Blue Okay’ – a concept she came up with after seeing a flash of vibrant blue during a particularly good massage.

“It’s the idea that there’s a place inside me, that’s blue, and okay, and is always there, even if it feels like it’s gone,” she reflects. “I just needed to know everything would be alright, in one way or another. So it’s an ideology for life – for people like me who are stressed out all the time…”

Now, as she looks ahead to the future, she’s making sure to nurture all aspects of her artistry – especially her first love, theatre.

“I want to do another play,” she remarks. “Nothing’s set in stone, but I think I’ll do that next year. I want to switch off my writing brain, and be an actress again, because that’s really enjoyable and interesting – and sort of makes me a better musician.

“And I’ve started writing another album already,” she reveals. “But I’d also like a holiday. And I’d like to buy a flat. All my stuff’s in storage, so I should probably try to have a home soon…”

“But it’s fucking wonderful that I can plan my life a little bit better now,” she adds. “Before, it was like everything was on hold until I ‘made it’ in music. There’s a long way to go – I definitely want to grow Self Esteem as big as it can go. But there’s a little bit of peace now, and there’s a few jobs I can do…”

A Complicated Woman is out now. Self Esteem plays 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin on September 24.