PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey

Person / b. 1969 / England

alternative rock indie rock art rock folk rock singer-songwriter rock chamber folk

Biography

Polly Jean Harvey is an English singer and songwriter. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments.

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Elsewhere

Analysed songs (10)

Down by the Water

PJ Harvey

A murder ballad told in fragments, where a narrator confesses to drowning a girl referred to alternately as lover and daughter,…

guilt and confession incest/taboo desire folk horror and Southern gothic

Dress

PJ Harvey

A woman puts on a dress to go dancing in hopes of pleasing a man, but the garment becomes a site of physical struggle and…

femininity as performance bodily discomfort and constraint desire for male approval

Good Fortune

PJ Harvey

A New York love song that treats romantic euphoria as a kind of superstition-defying miracle, sung by a narrator who has…

romantic euphoria reinvention/renewal New York as mythic backdrop

Rid of Me

PJ Harvey

A jealous, obsessive lover refuses to let go, oscillating between pleading vulnerability and menacing possessiveness. The song…

obsession codependency possessiveness

Sheela-Na-Gig

PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey turns the offer of a woman's body into a confrontation, borrowing the name of a medieval carved figure to skewer male…

female sexuality and shame rejection and humiliation the body as spectacle

The Wind

PJ Harvey

A ghost story told through a fictional or half-legendary figure named Catherine, who withdraws from worldly life into a hilltop…

isolation and withdrawal from society female sainthood and sacrifice loss of status and desire

This Is Love

PJ Harvey

A blunt, riff-driven declaration of desire that keeps colliding with the speaker's own disbelief at how simple and overwhelming…

desire versus complexity secrecy and shame repetition as devotion

This Mess We're In

PJ Harvey

A duet-style meditation on a fleeting New York encounter, sung against a backdrop of helicopters, sunsets and skyscrapers that…

transience of connection urban alienation desire versus impermanence

To Bring You My Love

PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey builds a self-mythologizing torch song out of biblical and folkloric imagery, casting devotion as a form of damnation.…

obsessive devotion blasphemy and sacrifice mythic self-invention

You Said Something

PJ Harvey

A quiet nocturne built around a single unrepeated line of dialogue that the singer withholds from the listener. Set on a…

displacement and belonging withheld intimacy urban romance