Self Esteem

Rebecca Lucy Taylor is one of the UK’s most exciting breakout stars of the past decade. Emerging from cult favourite to mainstream hero in the space of five whirlwind years, she enters 2026 as a bona fide triple threat in music, literature and acting, recipient of an Ivor Novello Visionary Award and nominated for Best Artist at the 2026 BRIT Awards.

2025 saw the release of her hugely acclaimed third album and debut book, both titled A Complicated Woman and both containing all Taylor’s unmistakable thumbprints – complex thought processes unfolding in real time, an effortless knack of exposing the feelings women are required to labour under.

First released in April 2025, the album features some of Taylor’s strongest songwriting to date and is propelled by a jubilant choir constructed of dozens and dozens of mostly female voices - “a community of people. I want you to hear and feel the connection” - including close friends, her band and collaborators. A month after its release Taylor won the Visionary Award at the Ivor Novello Awards for her genre-defying and fearless songwriting. The album’s lead single ‘Focus Is Power’ was chosen by the BBC to soundtrack their coverage of the Lionesses’ UEFA European Football Championships win in July - a full circle moment coming just months after Taylor publicly announced her ambition for the album to become montage music to mass sporting events and stadiums.

The album was followed in October by the book. Through the notes, lyrics and biting observational prose for which Taylor has become lauded, A Complicated Woman offers itself up as a subversive anti-Bible for any woman who has ever cracked under the weight of impossible expectation; who has done unto others the damage that has been wrought upon her; and who has discovered deep within herself a resilience that surprised her. It’s a cathartic scream that gets to the heart of being a woman in the world today, and cements Taylor as one of the most exciting voices of her generation, something reinforced by her co-curation of the London Literature Festival at the Southbank in November.