''Prioritise Pleasure'' is the second
studio album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...
by the British musician
Self Esteem
Self-esteem is confidence in one's own worth or abilities. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself (for example, "I am loved", "I am worthy") as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame. Smith and Mackie (2007) d ...
, aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor, released on 22 October 2021. The album was nominated for the 2022
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album released in the United Kingdom by a British or Irish act. It was created by Jon Webster and Robert Chandler in association with the B ...
.
Critical reception
''Prioritise Pleasure'' received widespread acclaim from
music critics
Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...
. At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which assigns a
normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 92, based on 12 critical reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
In a five-star review, ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' reviewer Laura Snapes described the album as "remarkable" and "a rare ''big'' pop album after 18 months of comparatively diminutive offerings from headline female pop acts".
El Hunt in ''
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
'' called it "assured and unapologetic" and "charged with a dark, smirking wit that's impossible to turn away from".
Jessie Atkinson of ''
Gigwise
''Gigwise'' is a British online music news site that features music news, photos, album reviews, music festivals, concert tickets and video content. Founded in June 2001, the site is based in London, England.
History
Gigwise was launched in 2001 ...
'' concluded that ''Prioritise Pleasure'' "represents Rebecca Taylor reaching her well-deserved pinnacle, as a modern popstar with the whole package: voice, humour, choreography, honesty, looks and the uncanny ability to pen a banger".
Accolades
''The Guardian'', ''
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'', the ''
i'' and ''Gigwise'' ranked ''Prioritise Pleasure'' as the best album of 2021.
''NME'' and ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' ranked the album as the fourth best of 2021. ''The Guardian'' named "I Do This All the Time" as the best song of 2021.
A
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
"poll of polls" that combined the results of 30 critics' end-of-year lists placed ''Prioritise Pleasure'' at number seven for 2021. A Metacritic collection of 182 year-end top ten lists by music publications placed the album at number 12 for the year.
Track listing
Charts
References
{{reflist
2021 albums