There were times that I planned to give up

“Please be honest for the most confusing game candidate in the world and the failure of the self-esteem!”

This is how Rebecca Lucy Taylor – alias the famous pop singer yourself – is presented on the stage of the Duke of York’s Theater in London.

It is a generally irreverent comment, an example of the dry mind that she uses to soften the sincerity and anger of her music.

“You can take piccies and videos,” continues the voice outside stage, “because she needs all the help she can get.”

This is also strictly ironic.

Three years ago, Taylor released his second album, a priori Pleasure, a manifesto for the root of female self who bristled in the expectations of society while recognizing her own shortcomings (“You sexist during the mental health speech seems counterproductive,” she observed on Moody).

After 10 years in the independent group of the middle of Slow Club, the album propelled her into Uncharted kingdoms.

There were magazine covers, appointments for the Mercury Prize and the Brit Awards, a main role on stage in Cabaret, a support place with Adele and, yes, an appearance on Celebrity Bake Off – where, unfortunately, she burned her crumpets.

“The week that prioritizes pleasure has come out, my whole life has changed,” she thinks.

“Not financially or in terms of glory, but it is as if there was a knot in my stomach that was delighted.

“So everyone was like,” Can you redo that, please? “”

Taylor was torn in two to follow up, a complicated woman, who comes out on Friday.

After playing it live for the first time in West End on Wednesday, she describes the album’s gestation process as “horrible”, “lonely” and “painful”.

“It was really stressful to execute what was in my head,” she explains during a telephone interview the next morning.

“I thought so big, but I still do not have access to the resources I need to do it as tall as I wanted.”

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

“The music industry is like:” You have 10 minutes, then you are finished and someone else will take your place, “she explains.

“So, I felt like I had no choice (but to get involved in another record) if I wanted to rely on what I had done.

“But as painful as it is and as dark as possible, the second when I am back on stage, I say to myself:” Oh, that’s why I love it “.”

She has not only made a new album – she also created a bold theatrical experience and breathtaking to go with it.

It takes place in a sparse recreation from the community center where Becky, eight, from Rotherham, learned to type in dance.

“”You just wanted to sing / You didn’t know what it would bring», Recalls an older and more cynical version of this child – as she assesses her life at the age of 38.

“”That’s really all there is, and that’s what you need to familiarize yourself.“”

While the show opens, 10 dancers align on each side of it, dressed in austere outfits which recall the servant’s tale.

Initially, their movements are steep and restricted but, as Taylor describes suffocating relationships with emotionally emotional men, they begin to rid and shake their bodies.

“We start in this world where we are chained, then we exorcate it,” said Taylor.

“During the show, everything takes place and everyone ends up being himself instead of complying with these societal standards.”

A four -night theater residence is an unusual way to launch an album. The public is not familiar with most songs, and no one is sure to absorb performance with carefully, or to sing and dance.

Several times, laughter collapses through the theater while the more acerbic observations of the singer hit the house. The next morning, she doesn’t really know what to do with the reaction.

“Whenever people laugh, my heart flows,” she said. “But then I’m like, the lyrics are funny, right?

“And I like to change laughter. It feels like people laugh because it’s uncomfortable.”

In the end, public members reflect the story on stage. Shaking their discomfort, they come out of their seats and start to make an almighty racket.

Music becomes a soundtrack of solidarity – which, it is transformed, was the intention of Taylor.

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

“Do you remember one day in the song of the elbow like that?” she asked. “The one who goes”Throw these wii-iide curtains‘?

“I went crazy for this song when he came out and, honestly, I played it again and again in the studio and I said:” I want to do that “.”

“I was very inspired by trying to make montages in the World Cup. It is a kind of music that I really appreciate, really.”

It is only half of history, however. The album is to capture the complex and contradictory impulses of a woman in the middle of the thirties.

The recent single 69, for example, is a swinging house track on which Taylor speaks with a franchise of his sex life. Imagine that Madonna justifies my love, if she was Really Be honest.

“This is an idea that I have had for ages, to list the sexual positions and to mark them so that there is no gray zone (for potential partners),” laughs the singer.

“But there is a more political element, namely that women still do not say what they want in the room. And I am like, I can no longer bear this. Please just let us have sex.

“It will not really win an Ivor Novello Prize for the lyrics, but I think it stands on the album with more emotional and deeper moments.”

These moments include the curse, a catchy ballad on the use of alcohol to alleviate its anxiety, which is perhaps the best self-esteem ever written.

His personal favorite, however, is called to sight. A collaboration with the South African musician Moonchild Sanelly is a response to the criticisms that they both received for having spoken.

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

“”I shrink to maintain peace, hoping that I do not shake my goal. “”

It is a feeling that Taylor immediately recognized.

While the excitement built around priority to pleasure in 2021, it began to receive “unpleasant messages” on social networks, which rocked it.

“I was really shocked the first time I had sorrow, because no one has ever been disturbed by what I do,” she said.

“People say that you should ignore it, but if you were going to a wedding and you had a good day and that a person called you (explanive), who would you come home thinking about? It’s just human nature.”

Finally, criticism wreaked havoc.

“There were times when I considered abandoning, which shocked me because I am that provocative and angry thing for so long,” she said.

“But in recent years, especially with the world like that, I have certainly had the feeling of protecting myself and closing.

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

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

This achievement is the connection fabric of a complicated woman.

Life is never easy, she said. No one is never really satisfied. Relations are difficult work. You can’t please everyone. But it’s okay. Are you doing well. Trust your intestine.

It sums up power is power, kept in the air by the sound of a Gospel choir: “And now I see it clearly with each death of each year / I deserve to be here. “”

On stage in London, she sings these last lines a capella with her dancers and singers, arms wrapped each other in a demonstration of female solidarity.

It is a cathartic moment after the deadly process of gathering the album.

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

With that, she left to make adjustments for the second night of the show. After that, she must find a way to reduce the production of the West End for a tour in the United Kingdom.

“I will do what I can to keep it, but it’s a huge risk because there is so little income from anything else,” she said.

In the end, however, its ambition is intact.

“I want to make 20 albums, I want to make greater theater shows,” she says.

“Of course, it would be useful if I could” cross “because everything becomes easier when you have more resources.

“But last night, I said to myself,” Bloody Hell, you did what you decided to do “. So I’m fine.”