The Garden, a PJ Harvey Discussion Site

ooof, another year gone. What a disgustingly sad year this was, good God. Nothing new under the sun.

On a happier note, I was a bit too optimistical on her progress on the new album, but ... maybe... brand new year brand new Polly?

during these months i did notice something really positive, though: the Garden forum has increased in popularity by a far margin; at first i though this could have been caused by the numerous young fellows who discovered PJ thanks (at least partly) to that videogame, "alan wake 2", which to my knowledge is a big one in the videogaming world, but then i realized it was released back in october 2023... an year and a half before this users' boom. Since then PJ collaborated with theatrical pieces, a movie (i think) and the new season of bad sisters... maybe the latter was very successful and brought plenty of new fans? who knows. The influx of new blood in the fandom is so evident even PJ's herself commented on it in a past inteview, saying the faces she's seeing at her concerts are getting younger and younger.

i took note of the peaks in users online:

-2011 had its most populated day with around 1500 users.

- 2024 broke, after 13 years, that number with 2000 users.

-2025 was something else,
^a day in april had 2500 users online;
^30/05/25=3000
^01/06=3500
^03/06=4817
^17/12=5088
^25/12=6329

If a site of hardcore fans like this is getting such notoriety, i would say it's pretty evident that PJ's career had a good boost. Maybe more notoriety will bring her to the attention of other musicians again, and this could end up in new collabs with interesting people/bands... but i'm probably just dreaming.

Isn’t it just bots and AI tools scouring the text here, like everywhere else? There has been almost no posts in the past few months, nothing to suggest it’s actual humans viewing the forum.

I do think that I Inside the Old Year Dying and her return to music after a 7-year hiatus brought her some new/young fans who were simply too young to be aware of her during the previous eras—obviously it’s only my personal/anecdotal experience but I’ve seen gen Z posting about her on social media much more than in the post-Hope Six limbo, more fan accounts popping up, I have also met college-age people at her show who only recently got into her music—but I don’t think monthly visits to a half-abandoned old-fashioned message board are a good metric. You would probably be better off charting her monthly Spotify listeners over the past few years to see if there has been a true resurgence in interest in her music.

You do make a really good point on bots, i'm quite old-fashioned and i tend to forget the novelties of the 2020s internet; yet, it is normal for people visiting virtually every site to not make any comments or leave almost no trace of their passage: the majority of people can't be bothered to engage in online discussions; even admitting that almost half of the new online devices at the same time are bots, it would still mean the numbers of humans vising the site at the same time had doubled since 2011 and the LES era. the fact a thread made by me in may 2025 (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3051) made 83618 views (=not unique views but it's still notable) while another one pubblished in october (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3071) made only 913 views could bring us to bots, yet there's a topical factor: in the first thread the topic was a cover of one of the most famous PJ Harvey's song, in the second it was a obscure inteview. The fact that one of the covers i shared in the first thread was taken off Youtube shortly after, could tell me there were quite a good chunk of humans that interacted with it. i would argue, being this a niche forum, that such thing could tell us that in the past few years PJ gained a good chunck of new hardcore fans, which is quite positive.

regarding other sites, instagram confirms quite a spike on new subscribers to PJ's account: https://socialblade.com/instagram/user/pjharveyofficial (as noted a month ago by Romario); are those all bots? almost 10000 in october, more than 17000 in november, and more than 18000 in december... could be bots, but it's not sure.

Facebook notes a decline in likes and "talking abouts", but Facebook is notoriously an "old people" social network, so this may be the cause: https://socialblade.com/facebook/user/PJHarvey

Youtube shows a good influx of views and subs; in the last months she gained millions of views (the peaks were in summer 2023 and march 2024 though)... are those all bots? unsure.
https://socialblade.com/youtube/handle/pjharvey

The PJ Harvey fans' reddit page (https://www.reddit.com/r/pjharvey/), a notorious site used primarly by young folks, has 2405 weekly visitors and 27 weekly contributions, not bad for being a PJH's fan page.

at last Spotify, which i've basically never used ( i'm more of a CD/vynil or Youtube guy) before, denotes a sharp decline in playlist reach (= the possibility for a PJ song to be viewed, not the actual views) since summer 2023, but a steady grow of playlists. https://songstats.com/artist/9a7pjh1q/p ... ce=spotify


All this data can't bring me to a definitive conclusion... but i want to be positive and think that PJ did have ( and maybe will have again) her "Harry Potter" (for Nick Cave) or "Stranger Things" ( for Kate Bush) moment which brought/will bring her to the youth. Or maybe i just grow tired of living over many years in a village which is completely oblivious of one of my favourite musicians' existance!

Not convinced by these yougov polls but this might be of interest... https://yougov.com/en-gb/ratings/altern ... ic-artists

The most popular alternative indie music artists (Q1 2026)


PJ at 89