Self Esteem opens up about her Britney Spears-inspired NME cover shoot

Self Esteem has opened up about her Britney Spears-inspired cover shoot for NME.

The artist, real name Rebecca Lucy Taylor, re-created Spears’ iconic 1999 Rolling Stone cover for this week’s NME‘s Big Read feature.

• READ MORE: Self Esteem on the cover: “I want to use the palatable nature of pop to Trojan horse in my agenda”

Spears’ cover showed her laying on a pink sheet in her underwear, holding a phone in one hand and clutching a Tiny Winky Teletubby in the other. In Taylor’s shoot, she is seen also on a pink sheet in her underwear, but with the added remnant of a meal deal around her and a Kermit The Frog.

When asked about her motivations for the cover, Taylor said: “I want to show, really authentically, what I look like in bed”, saying that she wanted to give the cover a relatable, tongue-in-cheek twist, in keeping with her ideals of correcting society’s unrealistic expectations of women.

“The reality is that women don’t look like that in bed,” she said of Spears’ past cover, adding: “Kermit represents my dream partner. In Year Six, people would be like, ‘I fancy Robert Smith’. I’d be like, ‘Err – I fancy Kermit!’ In hindsight that’s probably the origin of my bisexuality.”

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Last month, Taylor announced the release of her second album, ‘Prioritise Pleasure’.

‘Prioritise Pleasure’ is the follow-up to Self Esteem’s (AKA Rebecca Lucy Taylor) 2019 debut album ‘Compliments Please’, and is set for release on October 22 via Fiction Records.

“13 songs of cleansing myself of the guilt and fear of being a woman who is ‘too much’ and replacing that very notion with a celebration of myself, of you, of being a human and the way that isn’t always easy or perfect, and that’s ok,” Self Esteem said of her new album in a press release, adding: “Sorry to my parents for the lyric ‘shave my pussy, that’s just for me’ but I think it’s maybe my finest hour!”

Self Esteem previously announced details of a UK and Ireland tour for November, which kicks off in Bristol on November 1. Tickets remain on sale here.

You can see the full list of dates here:

NOVEMBER 2022
1 – Bristol, Fleece
2 – Newcastle, Wylam Brewery
3 – Cardiff, Clwb Ifor Bach
4 – Oxford, O2 Academy
6 – Edinburgh, The Bongo Club
7 – Glasgow, Audio
9 – Dublin, The Workmans Club
10 – Manchester, Gorilla
11 – Leeds, Belgrave Music Hall
12 – Sheffield, The Leadmill
14 – Norwich, Arts Centre
15 – Reading, Sub 89
16 – Southampton, Joiners
17 – London, Heaven
19 – Margate, Elsewhere
20 – Brighton, Patterns
23 – Exeter, Phoenix
24 – Birmingham, Hare & Hounds
25 – Nottingham, Metronome

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