To bring you her love
Singer PJ Harvey has defied all convention to come out on top
by Balvinder Sandhu 04:45 AM Feb 07, 2012
It isn't easy pinning down PJ Harvey. You could say she's a bit of an enigma. After all, the 42-year-old Brit isn't your typical pop star. With her doleful eyes and long tresses, she looks more like a character straight out of a Stephen King novel than what she really is: One of the most influential artistes of our time.
She can be even more leftfield than Lady Gaga, more gut-wrenching than Janis Joplin, weirder than Bjork, and more cerebral than Tori Amos. Yet, this is the same woman who recorded what many critics have called 2011's album of the year, Let England Shake. And she's the only person in history to win the Mercury Prize - the award for album excellence in the United Kingdom and Ireland - twice.
Unlike some other artistes who might like to downplay their achievements in the hope of coming across as the paragon of humility, Harvey won't hesitate to tell you how gratifying those accolades can be.
"It's a wonderful feeling to have won the Mercury Prize not once but twice. It's a great honour and something I'll never forget," she told Today.
"It makes me very happy to have this recognition of many different bodies," she said. "It pleases me, because I really just tried to follow my heart and do what was most urgent for me to do as a writer at the time. I knew that, with Let England Shake, I had achieved what I had set out to do. But whether other people would like that or not I had no idea. So it's a very welcoming surprise, that this album has resonated with other people as well."
Let England Shake is in stores now.
How different is PJ Harvey the artiste to Polly Jean Harvey the person?
I think in the same way that anybody's work is different to how they conduct themselves at home, yes, there's a difference. I'm sure that when everybody leaves home to go to their work every day, they leave a certain part of themselves behind. When you go out into the public domain you have to have a degree of protection so there's that difference, but I don't think that's any different to how I see my friends going about their work life.
You've logged 24 years in the business. What's your secret to longevity?
I really think the key for me is staying honest to where I'm led as an artiste, staying true to that and not getting swayed by any outside influences. Not getting swayed by a general tide that seems to be happening but just follow my heart and honour that. That can be a very difficult thing to do - sometimes it goes right against the grain.
The Guardian described you as a "cultural treasure". Any thoughts
on that?
Obviously I take that as quite a flattering comment and I welcome it. To feel part of the cultural landscape, particularly from your country of origin, I find it very strengthening, very honouring. If I become part of that landscape for younger people, for people coming through now, then that's a wonderful thing. It makes me very happy and if I can give something back. If I can inspire people in some way, then that's the ultimate reward.
There's been a lot of talk about what Let England Shake is all about. Can you tell us more?
I wanted to write an album that dealt with war and conflict and the idea of nationhood. I've wanted to write that for many years, and I tried and failed many times during the last 10 years. It was only really in the last four years when I began to try and write around this subject matter again that I finally felt like I was getting somewhere, that it was beginning to work, and I think that was because I was a bit more knowledgeable as a writer.
I think it's a very fine balance, if you're talking about political, sociological subject matter. It's easy to tip into what I would call dogmatic protest song, which I didn't want to do. I wanted to maintain a certain degree of ambiguity to the lyrics and to leave a lot of room for the listener to enter and make up their own mind about certain things.
How do you manage to stay honest in your songs without being preachy?
I think I'm quite a harsh critic of my own work so I relied on that. I certainly knew when something wasn't working but I didn't always know how to make it work. I didn't know how to suddenly write a song that was in the right balance, it was through multiple trials and errors. I had to write quite a lot of things that I knew were wrong, before I could find out what was really right.
Do you believe that music can change the world?
I think there have been moments in history when that has seemed possible, for instance, in the early '60s, during the Vietnam war, the black movement in America... I hesitate to say whether I felt that's still the case now.
I think communication has changed tremendously, I don't know if music can ever gain that weight again, or whether the art world could, I really hope that it can, and maybe it will. At the moment, the most vibrant form of expression actually is in marching and protests, as we've seen, that seems to be the way the energy is being channelled.
What's the strangest place you've been when inspiration for a song or a lyric struck?
I don't know about the strangest place but I think the most dangerous time is when I'm driving. I think, often, when you switch off the creative part of the brain and you're doing something quite practical, a lot of answers to creative problems will come. It's very often that I'm reaching for notepads or Dictaphones when I'm driving, and it's not the ideal time. (Laughs)
What's the one piece of work you're most proud of?
I don't know if I could say one particular album ... I certainly feel like Rid Of Me and To Bring You My Love and Let England Shake were moments of great change and very difficult records to make. And they were all forks in the road, if you like, where I made quite a different turn creatively. I feel very proud of those records for that.
What would you like the PJ Harvey legacy to be?
I would like to leave something worthwhile behind. I'd like to feel that I've made or created something that somebody would still want to look at or listen to and would give them strength in years to come. That will be very fulfilling to me, if I felt that that could still be of service to people when I'm dead and gone.
For our full interview with PJ Harvey, visit our music blog Poparazzi (
http://blogs.todayonline.com/poparazzi).
http://www.todayonline.com/Entertainmen ... u-her-love
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