1 Min ReadBy Mike Duffy
Re-Creation Remixed: Self Esteem Covers a Jarvis Cocker Classic
She also plays her own track, “Just Kids,” on the Acoustasonic® Player Telecaster®.
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Jarvis Cocker certainly has a wide catalog of tunes, from his storied time with Pulp to his prolific solo career.
One of his biggest songs is undoubtedly “Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time,” a single off the 2006 album Jarvis that hit No. 1 on the UK indie chart. Full of fuzzy guitars and set to a jangly beat, the track encourages a young woman to move on from a toxic relationship and realize what she’s worth.
Perhaps it’s that message that resonated with English singer/songwriter Self Esteem (a.k.a. Rebecca Lucy Taylor), as she chose it to cover in this edition of Fender’s Re-Creation Remixed series.
Taylor stripped down Cocker’s original composition, choosing to only use her Acoustasonic Player Telecaster with a few background singers to round out the sparse, gothic stage. The result is a beautiful rendition of the classic, as she pours a ton of emotion into the heartfelt lyrics while coaxing gentle acoustic tones out of the guitar.
“The lyrics are so empowering for a woman,” Taylor said about her song selection. “It’s often that I love a song so much that I just want to sing it, but you have to be careful with that. Does the cover need you to sing it?
“The original is very bombastic, full-band. There’s a lot of guitar, a lot of pedals going on … but I wanted to make it a Joan Baez-type of song. I like to make you think differently about a song if I’m going to cover it.”
Taylor’s opening performance paired perfectly with her closer, as “Just Kids,” a standout from 2021’s Prioritise Pleasure, is also a meditation on a troubled relationship. At the end of the day, Taylor believes writing and playing songs that deal with these feelings offer the chance to become stronger as a result.
“(‘Just Kids’) is sort of a contemplative way to look at a difficult relationship in my life that I've accepted now,” she said. “There’s a sort of nostalgia for what it could have been, but isn’t.
“I’m inspired by the idea of empowering myself daily by whatever I’m writing about to help me grow.”
Watch Taylor’s stunning mini-set in this edition of Re-Creation Remixed, and click here to shop the Acoustasonic Player Telecaster.
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