This article references to sexual assault and rape.
As two of Britain’s most outspoken female artists, Becky Hill and Self Esteem have joined forces on Becky’s powerful new single, True Colours, in which she speaks out for the first time about being sexually assaulted by a friend nine years ago – and not being believed. Here, the insurmountable pair speak to Polly Dunbar about assault, standing up to sexism in the music industry, and demanding urgent conversations around consent.
‘I didn’t want it to come across sad, or vulnerable,’ says Becky Hill, remembering how she felt writing True Colours, the collaboration with Self Esteem which opens her new album, and undeniably her most personal song yet. ‘I wanted it to be angry. I wanted to make a real angry bop.’
As you’d expect from two of Britain’s most exciting female musicians, the track is an undeniable banger – an exhilarating ear-worm destined to fill dancefloors all summer long. But what makes it truly extraordinary is its message: it’s about a sexual assault Becky went through aged 21 by one of her male friends. ‘And I had to keep it to myself because I knew none of the friends I had at the time would believe me,’ she says. With lyrics including: ‘All the red flags you chose to ignore’ and ‘Do you believe me now?’; it’s drenched in righteous, power-reclaiming fury.
They’re emotions which resonate deeply with Self Esteem (real name Rebecca Lucy Taylor), whom Becky asked to sing the song’s second verse, after the pair met at this year’s Brit Awards. She has also experienced sexual assault; one of her own songs, I’m Fine, explores the subject (sample lyrics: ‘Tried to let you down so gently when I had the right to tell you simply: No.’)
Although both stars are known for their smart, unapologetic views on weighty subjects such as misogyny, body image and sexuality, the topic of assault is one neither has discussed in detail before today. Now, they’re sharing their stories with GLAMOUR – the impact of the traumatic episodes on their lives, and how they’ve managed to seize back control of their own narratives.
Listening to two such high-profile women talk openly and eloquently about something still so often shrouded in secrecy and shame, it’s impossible not to be inspired. As Self Esteem points out when we meet in a North London studio for GLAMOUR’s May cover shoot, ‘Once upon a time we’d have been told [by the music industry] that to talk would have ruined our careers’. Times are changing, but they’re both pushing for more, and faster. By speaking out, they hope to help other victims understand that what they’re going through isn’t their fault, and to spark a wider, urgent conversation around assault and consent.
And as their fierce shoot shows, neither is willing to let what happened define them or hold them back. Together, they project strength and solidarity. There’s no victimhood here, just a reclaiming of their power.
‘We’re aligned in wanting to talk about this subject matter, but not seem sad and deflated,’ says Self Esteem, the more softly-spoken of the two, but every bit as impassioned. ‘It’s anger, and then healing, and you don’t hear that story much. So many people I know have been through it in one form or another, and to paint it as a really sad thing that ruins your life, and that’s the end… It can’t be that. It can’t be the end of the story.’
Although they’re musically different – Becky’s the queen of dance anthems; Self Esteem of subversive art pop – the pair have a lot in common. It’s taken both of them time to achieve success on their own terms, and they’re now at the peak of their powers.
Becky, 30, grew up in the picturesque village of Bewdley, Worcestershire, and first found fame at just 17 years old as a contestant on The Voice in 2012. She swiftly became the go-to ‘featured artist’ for records by producers such as MK and Sigala. Now, with six Top 10 hits including Disconnect, Wish You Well and Remember, plus two Brit awards, her name is finally as widely-known as the songs which showcase her incredible voice.
Self Esteem, 37, is from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, and plugged away throughout her twenties in Sheffield-based indie band Slow Club before releasing her solo debut album, Compliments Please, in 2019. Its critically-adored follow-up, Prioritise Pleasure, came in 2021. Her whip-smart observations about modern relationships (good, bad and toxic) paired with heart-soaring choruses have made her a feminist heroine for our times.
It makes sense, then, that now feels like the right time to use their voices to highlight the subject of sexual assault which, according to ONS data, has happened to 1 in 4 UK women.
Understandably, neither wants to delve into the specific details of their individual assaults today, but their candour about how the experiences made them feel is remarkable.
When she wrote True Colours, Becky’s assault had been ‘eating away’ at her for eight years. ‘I’ve always classed myself as a strong bitch,’ she says. ‘I like to think I can take a lot of shit, but with that, it felt like something had left me that will never come back. I’ll never get that bit back of me. That moment will stay with me for the rest of my life.’
After the incident, she had initially tried to ‘push it under the carpet’ but suffered flashbacks. Prior to meeting her fiancé, Charlie Gardner, who works in events, she says, ‘I was terrified of men, terrified of going there.’
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Following EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), a form of intense, movement-based trauma therapy, last year she bravely went to the police, which she credits with helping her draw a line under what was done to her.
‘That sense of justice is really strong in me,’ she says. ‘I am always one of those people that if I feel like something bad’s happened, I try and speak up about it as much as possible. It was my [current] partner who for years was like, “I don’t know why you are not reporting this.” And it was my mother who told me not to, because I think she thought it was going to be more painful for me to report it. And actually, it was so liberating. Becky clarifies that her mother’s response was typical of an older generation of women who would rather stay quiet than speak out for fear the repercussions would be worse.
‘With rape and sexual assault, the numbers on reporting are so low that I wanted to be able to sit with my future children and if, God forbid, the same happens to them, say, “You know what? When I was your age, I went to the police and reported it, and it was really powerful for me.”
‘The police officer rang me after calling him [the perpetrator] in, and I said, "What did he say?" And she said, "He told the story exactly the same way you did apart from changing a couple of the details of the actual event." And it was a bittersweet for me; sweet in the sense that he had to sit with a solicitor and work out how he was going to lie for an hour and a half before the interview started. And that for me was enough to be like, “You squirmed. You know what you did and you had to lie to change it.” And I think that, for me, wasn't by any stretch of the imagination enough closure. But it was enough.
‘It was only through years and years of really deep therapy work that I was able to sit in front of a couple of strangers in a police station and do that. And now I’m able to sit and talk about it on a public scale.’
Every situation is different. For Self Esteem, reaching the point where she was able to identify her own experiences as abuse took time.
‘The incidents were stealth in that the intentions were there from the start, I just didn’t realise it. It was subtle and I was coerced,’ she says. ‘And then there was a backdating thing of going, “Hang on a minute. I’m sure that was not my fault.” I did my own research and realised that the way we see it so much, like in BBC dramas – where there’s a woman grabbed down an alleyway – that is a small percentage of what actually happens.
‘I realised I could qualify it in my mind as sexual assault, and it is that serious, and it wasn’t fair. That helped me to heal a bit inside me, with therapy.’
Before that realisation, she’d blamed herself. ‘For so long, you’re so sure it’s your fault, and that’s because it’s so difficult to get any justice. You’re just stuck because you can’t say anything and you also can’t get what you need, which is someone to apologise or take accountability. So you just stop, and that’s where you’re angry.’
Like Becky, channelling her anger into music was therapeutic. ‘Music is always where I put everything, but it’s a useful place,’ she says. ‘It feels amazing to cleanse yourself by being defiant and making art out of it. The saddest thing for me is how many people are like, "Yeah, I know how that feels." And it's like, "God, it's constant."’
They’d like to see consent being taught in schools, so it’s clear in everyone’s minds from the earliest age possible. ‘It was something I was never taught about, nor any of the other people in my age group,’ says Becky. ‘And I feel like I was let down by the education system because of that.’
‘Yeah, they teach you about sex but not about enjoying it,’ says Self Esteem. ‘There’s a charity called The Schools Consent Project that I worked with when I did [the score for] Prima Facie [the play, which starred Jodie Comer and which also deals with the subject of rape] and they’re amazing. They’re going into schools doing workshops, and teaching that fundamentally, sex should be about mutual pleasure.’
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Men also need to be made more aware of the experience of female fear, she believes. ‘Some men I know are just mind-blown by it. I'm like, "I can't walk here. I can't go there." "Why?" "Oh because..." And they just can't believe it.
‘I certainly grew up being terrified of everything, but I’d make sure no one knew. And now I’m open about how scared I am of that shit, and what it takes for me to even get home - even that conversation's helpful.’
Often, sexual crimes are still portrayed as being the victim’s fault: maybe they were drunk, or their dress was too short, or they were ‘asking for it’ in some other way. Self Esteem says her instinct after her assault was to try to protect herself by eliminating any hint of sexuality from her appearance and behaviour. ‘I was like, “Well, don’t be in any way sexual ever again, anywhere,”’ she says. ‘You want to wear a nun’s habit, and then you’ll be free and you’ll be safe. And that’s just not true.’
The body confidence both singers exude now is hard-won, the result of all their work to move on from their assaults. Performing as sexily as they want, wearing as little – or as much – as they feel like that particular day, is one way they show that they – and nobody else – have autonomy over their bodies.
Becky nods, and adds: ‘The empowering thing now, for me, is that I am so comfortable with who I am. I can stand on stage and have as much sexual prowess as I want. And it’s not for anybody else; it’s for me.’
‘I think it’s quite important to say, “Here is my body, my sexuality, and who I am,”’ says Self Esteem. ‘I also don’t deserve to be raped for it though. It’s quite bog-standard, level one empowerment that I just get on with.’
Sadly, a woman enjoying her body is a radical act in a society which polices every aspect of female existence. Online, Self Esteem is attacked by trolls who claim there’s a disconnect between talking about sexual assault and wearing certain clothing. ‘Critical thinking skills are very low of people that are like, “But you’ve got a tight dress on, so how can you?”’ she says, with typical deadpan wit.
Her authenticity is exactly what’s sent her career soaring since the pandemic. A true polymath, her CV encompasses starring in the West End (she’s just finished a stint as the lead in Cabaret with Jake Shears), composing (she wrote the aforementioned score to the hit play Prima Facie), and acting (she appears in the film Layla, due to be released this year, and has starred in Billie Piper’s hit series, I Hate Suzie), as well as her achievements as Self Esteem.
By the end of her time in Slow Club, she felt restricted by the image people had of her – ‘This sweet, heterosexual lady in a band,’ she has said previously.
Now, she tells me that embracing who she is – bisexual, working class, Northern, fiercely intelligent with tonnes to say – is a massive relief. ‘I just couldn’t take it any more,’ she says. ‘My mental health was so bad and it immediately got better once I wasn’t lying every day, you know, trying to fit in. The second I started being really truthful, it was insane how many people related.’
She also described the limitations of being a woman in the music industry.
Part of that truth was embracing her size 12-14 body the way it looks naturally. Perhaps her best-loved song, I Do This All The Time, alludes to comments made to her by a tour manager she worked with: ‘All you need to do, darlin’, is fit into that little dress of yours.’ She nods. ‘I remember being told to lose weight,’ she says, referring to various professionals in the industry.
Pressure to be skinny led her to develop disordered eating habits in her twenties, and, relatably, she freely admits the demons that tell her she’d be more successful if she were smaller never quite go away.
‘I'm never shy about saying I'm as infected in the head as anyone else,’ she says. ‘Because of how I've grown up, because of the way the media is, the social conditioning… If I could wave a wand and just assimilate? I would. I'm never quiet about that. The only thing I do is just try and logically push through it, because why the fuck should we have to look that way?’
If she sees negative comments, she tells herself, ‘What I’m trying to do is quite a big thing – it’s not just music; it's lots of different things. I can't expect it to be plain sailing and nice.
‘But also, in a way, the bullshit helps me sort of keep track of [society’s view.] Seeing that my body, me feeling all right about my body, offends people – I’m like, “Oh, that’s a good little marker. Good to know. That’s still a fucking thing.”’
While she knows her refusal to be ashamed of her body won’t change the wider landscape, what she’s doing matters. ‘It’s about tiny, tiny steps,’ she says. ‘All you can do is keep fostering those.’
Becky has had to wage her own battle with misogyny throughout her career, in an industry in which male DJs and producers are feted while female vocalists are often treated as accessories.
‘I grew up in the industry as a world where the “faceless producer” was kind of king,’ she says. ‘And that battle to get people to care about who I am was very difficult and took the best part of eight years.
‘There were times when I wasn't allowed to be in the music video. And sometimes I wasn't allowed to be on the front cover at all. I was doing these massive dance records, and it was doubling the fee of the producer. But I was still losing money every time I did a show. So a lot of patience was needed.’
In a brave and radical move, Becky set up her own record label, EKO Music, to ensure she had full control of every aspect of her career, from the music to videos, PR, remixes and artwork. Slowly, as her hit count grew, the recognition she craved – and deserved – came, too.
‘It's been a real grind, a lot of hard work,’ she says. ‘There was no blueprint – there hasn’t been a female artist writing and singing dance music who’s as big as David Guetta or Calvin Harris. And I just feel very grateful now that people are coming to a Becky Hill set, turning up purposely for me.’
Her second album, Believe Me Now?, out on May 31st, is by far her most personal and ‘cathartic’, she says. Its themes include betrayal, loneliness and isolation, as well as the assault detailed in True Colours, but are all seen through an uplifting, empowering lens, and with killer tunes.
‘It feels unapologetic,’ she says. ‘It represents who I am right now – I turned 30 in February and I feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin. I know myself more now than I did in my twenties, which was a very turbulent time.
‘I very much lost my sense of self throughout most of my twenties, which wasn’t through anything other than the fault of somebody else. And that was really difficult to deal with. It was quite symbolic for me to leave my twenties behind. I was actually quite relieved.
‘I was insecure and terrified and wanting to be unapologetic, but scared of upsetting people; wanting to do well, but being scared of failure; wanting to put myself out there, but scared that nobody would listen to my music. And I've got to the point now where I am so much more knowledgeable and confident, and it feels great.’
Last year, Becky was diagnosed with ADHD, which has made sense of some aspects of her personality she’s struggled with in the past. ‘I think I have some form of autism, too,’ she says. ‘I don't just hyper focus on things, I struggle to understand what people mean, and I can be quick to temper if something isn't done in the way that I have in my mind. If the plan changes, I start getting very irate very quickly.’
Has the diagnosis helped? ‘I'm definitely a bit easier on myself,’ she says. ‘I have a lot more compassion for myself now. I think that's just come with age anyway, but the diagnosis has definitely helped me go, “Don't worry, you're not weird. This is normal for somebody with this diagnosis.”’
She’s blazing a trail for other women in the industry and says that, gradually, it’s changing. She describes a typical scenario on one of her early tours with an all-male group. ‘The only women around me and the other vocalist were groupies,’ she says. ‘I was so young, a kid, and I was in this environment where they were bringing girls back on the bus and there was nobody I could turn to who wasn’t a man.’
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Now, she says, ‘I'm noticing more women, whether that's backstage in the tech side, or onstage on the artist side, and also fewer women back there trying to be groupies. I hope they’re setting their sights higher and thinking, “Those women making music, that’s where I deserve to be”.’
She hopes the new album will take her career to the next level. ‘I want to take over the world,’ she laughs. ‘I’ll be performing all summer, doing festivals here and in Europe, and I’m starting to sell out shows in America, too. So hopefully by the end of the year everyone will have heard this album.’
Self Esteem has just finished recording her new album, as yet unnamed, which she describes as ‘very hopeful.’ One of its themes is what happens when you achieve everything you’ve dreamed of – where do you go next? ‘There’s loads of ruminating on getting to the top of this hill that you always imagined for yourself, and then what?’
She also hopes to do more acting and writing, and also try directing. ‘Childish Gambino, or Donald Glover, directs and acts and also has a huge legitimate music career. And no one really bats an eyelid at that,’ she points out. ‘And I'm like, can a woman just be really multimedia and make art in loads of different ways? That's my dream. Have my agenda immortalised in different art forms.’
She and Becky both see continuing to relish the lives they’ve worked so hard for as the ultimate act of defiance against the perpetrators of their sexual assaults.
‘The fact that I just keep living, and I keep going, and it’s not floored me, it’s not made me stop – that’s as good as it can get for me,’ says Self Esteem. ‘For me, it now runs in the background. I really care about helping other people feel all right about it – validating their experiences – and just keeping the conversation going.’
Becky agrees. ‘I think the healing comes when you realise that your life isn't just that story that you've played in your mind over and over again, and gone through every different scenario and how you could have done it better, or how you could have really said “no”, or really made yourself clear, or tried to be physical, and push, and all of that sort of shit.
‘That shit used to plague me all the time. It was daily, and now it isn't as much as it used to be. For me, it was a win to know that that wasn't going to be my story anymore, and that I could actually turn it into my version of how I wanted to tell other people about it in a way that felt empowering, instead of this really bad thing happened to me, that he got away with, and there’s nothing I can do.’ (After Becky reported her assault, a number of years after the incident, her alleged perpetrator was arrested. But the fact that his account of events differed to hers ultimately meant that it was his word against hers, and no further action was taken.)
Becky hopes the outcome of being so honest will be that ‘the conversation stays open. I’m hoping that things will begin to change a bit, and people will be able to talk about this stuff more openly without a degree of shame on themselves, and with the onus back on the perpetrators.’
After reporting her assault to the police last year, Becky raised the subject again with the group of friends who hadn’t believed her when she first told them all those years previously.
‘I sat them all down and I was like, “You get it now, don’t you?”,’ she says. ‘Which is where the song came from. I felt that, for me, that chapter was closed. And now it’s for other people to interpret it in the way that they want.’
Becky Hill's new album, Believe Me Now? is out on May 31st.
For more information about reporting and recovering from rape and sexual abuse, you can contact Rape Crisis on 0808 500 2222.
If you have been sexually assaulted, you can find your nearest Sexual Assault Referral Centre here. You can also find support at your local GP, voluntary organisations such as Rape Crisis, Women's Aid, and Victim Support, and you can report it to the police (if you choose) here.
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True Colours performed by Becky Hill and Self Esteem. Written by Rebecca Hill, Lauren Aquilina, Mark Ralph, Uzoechi Emenike and Jack Patterson.
Words and Music by Lauren Amber Aquilina, Uzoechi Emenike, Rebecca Hill, Jack Patterson & Mark Stewart Ralph © 2024, Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd/ Sony/ATV Music Publishing Allegro (UK), London N1C 4DJ. Licensed courtesy of Warner Chappell Music Ltd. Pub. by Kobalt Music Services Ltd (KMS) (20%).