It was probably inevitable that I was going to end up spending my Thursday night alone, crying in Brixton Academy. I was there to see Self Esteem, the genre-bending pop star whose blend of deadpan spoken word, soaring chorals and healthy dose of “what the fuck am I doing with my life” lyrics have made her an icon for slightly lost 30-something women everywhere. (And, it turns out, a surprising number of ageing men: I was quietly bemused to observe one, who looked quite a bit like Steve Pemberton, shouting along to “69”, a song about the sex positions Self Esteem does and does not enjoy.) And I was alone because M— has, for the past month, once again been away on tour, and I am not the sort of person to miss out for want of company.
I say it was inevitable because it has just been one of those weeks where the ordinary stuff of life seems suddenly overwhelming; where no amount of sleep can quell the roil; where the toll of trying to function in some way normally for the past four months forcefully makes itself apparent. The tears are closer to the surface than normal at the moment, I suppose, and come at inopportune moments. And I have always been susceptible to collective effervescence: emotion triggered by a shared experience with a large group. I was relieved to discover this is a recognised phenomenon, and I wasn’t just the lone weirdo who cries at political marches.
Inevitable, too, because Brixton Academy is a venue indelibly associated with my dad and the many nights we spent there together. Having collected my pint (£8.50!) from the bar, I made my way down to the spot he always insisted we take: in front of the sound desk and slightly off centre for the best mix, and just behind the crowd barrier that roughly separates the mosh pit from the rest. From there, the venue’s gently sloping floor gives you as close to an unobstructed view as you’re going to get. I remembered how we used to stand in this exact spot, my head leant back to rest against his shoulder when I grew tired. Dad would stand with his arms crossed throughout, face impassive; only afterwards, as you waded through the sea of cups on the way out, would you discover if he thought it had been a brilliant or terrible night. I could almost imagine he was still there, standing behind me. The bass of the support act vibrated through my chest, as if giving me a second heartbeat, and I thought immediately of my hand on his still chest.
I don’t think I fully appreciated, as a teenager, how cool it was that my dad took me to gigs in London – on school nights, no less. Counting through my old ticket stubs (a considerable loss in the transition to the digital age; the “expired passes” in my Apple Wallet don’t have quite the same effect), I find 19 gigs at Brixton between 2006, when I turned 14, and 2010: Interpol, the Raconteurs, Babyshambles, Editors, the National. No doubt there were others whose tickets were lost. It wasn’t just bands that he wanted to see – he suffered through My Chemical Romance twice, and Panic! at the Disco (though he drew the line at McFly – Mum took me to that one). And it wasn’t just us two. He also took one of my friends from school, whose own father had died when she was a child; when I texted her to tell her Dad was gone, she told me what an influence he had been on her taste in music and how grateful she was for those nights we had spent together.
Of course, we must also attribute a few of my tears to the sheer brilliance of Self Esteem. She uniquely captures the contradictions of my experience of womanhood – longing and defiance, warmth and anger, confidence and uncertainty. There was at points a strange discordance between the lyrics and the joyful response of the crowd. “This really is all there is/And that’s the thing you’ve got to get comfy with/We’re not chasing happiness any more, girls/We’re chasing nothing,” she intoned. “The great big still, the deep blue OK/And we’re OK today.” And everyone cheered. Bleak yet hopeful. Sometimes OK is about as much as one can strive for, and this has just been one of those weeks.
[Further reading: Thatcher-land]
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This article appears in the 16 Oct 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Emperor