I’m a Libra who’s terrified of conflict.” “I get such a lot from oversharing: then everyone’s got the facts, everyone’s got the context. “She was like, ‘I will do it before you can’,” Taylor says. Taylor brings up the circumstances which led Madonna to publish her 1992 erotic book SEX – after having her nude photos published in the mid-’80s without her consent, she decided to take back control of the narrative. While some artists tend to mull over their message carefully before serving up a stream of manicured, media-ready mission statements in interviews, Taylor rarely censors what’s on her mind – aside from an incredibly rare clarification about the nature of her relationship with Kermit – and views openness as an important quality. While you think you’re listening to something sexy or fizzy and poppy, it’s actually me trying to school you about consent.” What I want to do is to use the palatable nature of pop to Trojan horse in my agenda. “With the live show that we’re doing, there are dance routines like Pussycat Dolls… because they’re fun to play on.” She adds: “I enjoy playing into really shiny pop tropes. “It’s a big slot for me,” she says, explaining that the plan is to air more songs from the upcoming album, along with plenty of choreo party spirit. It will no doubt receive a rapturous response at the upcoming Green Man festival in Wales’ Brecon Beacons, where she’ll play before headliners Teenage Fanclub on the weekend’s second-biggest second stage. Currently, the 34-year-old musician is gearing up to release her second album ‘Prioritise Pleasure’, and has been playing for her largest crowds yet thanks to the runaway success of her poppy and powerful recent single ‘I Do This All The Time’, which is now in regular rotation on 6 Music. Such honesty is typical of Self Esteem, the name of the solo project Taylor launched in 2017 after leaving the indie-pop duo Slow Club. But I don’t know – if my love life carries on how it is, I might have to.” He’s the most reliable lover of my…” Taylor stops herself, before adding: “I don’t fuck my teddy. All my major relationships have had really long arms and legs and bodies, so I think I’m a Kermit fetishist. I’d be like, ‘Err – I fancy Kermit!’ In hindsight that’s probably the origin of my bisexuality,” she adds, before roaring with laughter. “In Year Six, people would be like, ‘I fancy Robert Smith’.

“Kermit represents my dream partner,” she says, without a visible hint of irony. While Britney cuddled up next to a stuffed toy of the Teletubbies’ Tinky Winky for that cover back in the late nineties, there’ll be a beaming Kermit the Frog tucked underneath Taylor’s arm on her NME cover. “The reality,” she says, “is that women don’t look like that in bed.” The musician wants to take the aesthetic of Britney Spears’ iconic 1999 Rolling Stone cover, and give it a relatable, tongue-in-cheek Self Esteem twist. “I want to show, really authentically, what I look like in bed,” Rebecca Lucy Taylor announces, a couple of days ahead of her first-ever NME cover shoot.Ĭhatting over Zoom from a nondescript rehearsal studio in London, Taylor has the vision clearly laid out in her mind already: she’ll be propped up in a nest of pink satin – with a Tesco meal deal (preference: tuna and sweetcorn sandwich with salt and vinegar crisps and a Mars bar – “a high thread-count meal deal”) within arm’s reach.

Trojan purple vibe