Prioritise Pleasure

‘Prioritise Pleasure’ manages to challenge accepted norms and help to exorcise long-buried demons; it’s powerful to the last drop.

Taylor might not have been coming for the crown of pop star of the year, but with Prioritise Pleasure she’s certainly taken it.

Prioritise Pleasure is a richly compelling album. It’s also a big, glorious pop record, the sort that Taylor hinted at back in the days of her former band Slow Club’s Complete Surrender. ... It’s the album of Rebecca Taylor’s career, and surely quite comfortably the best record that will be released in 2021.

Commanding, assertive, and powerful, Prioritise Pleasure is everything pop music should be. Wholly unafraid to tackle difficult subjects with ease, in Rebecca Taylor we also have the makings of a serious pop behemoth.

One of the most insightful pop records this year.

What rides at the top and takes your attention pretty much all the time is Taylor herself. Her words are honest and palpable, but also unflinchingly direct.

Across the album’s 13 tracks, she flits easily between pop’s peripherals and its core, dispensing emotional catharsis all the way.

Assured and unapologetic, it’s charged with a dark, smirking wit that’s impossible to turn away from, and achieves an incredibly impressive feat: not only does Self Esteem detail the fear, uneasiness and anger of being a woman – keys clutched between our fists – but also manages to make us laugh at the sheer absurdity of being forced to navigate a world that has, quite unbelievably, normalised misogyny.

Two years on, her sound is equally ambitious but more committed: here are modern, maximalist pop songs with top notes of R&B, Trap and Afrobeat, plus experimental detailing. As ever, Taylor's lyrics convince. [Nov 2021, p.32]

Self-acceptance is a major theme of this bold album and her complicated emotions can be felt by listeners in this stand-out album from Self Esteem.