Born on October 9: PJ Harvey hates taboos and easy options
She was born in 1969 in a small town in Dorset (England) and is celebrating her 55th birthday
PJ Harvey's angular profile actually betrays a rich and complex personality. Although she once posed shirtless for a cover of the English music weekly "New Musical Express", she deserves much more than an image of a scandalous singer. Polly Jean, by demanding the same rights as men, was on the contrary making a strong feminist gesture. "The reactions were grotesque," she told us at the release of the aptly named "Is This Desire?", "especially in feminist circles! I simply thought I could best embody the stripping down of our music, but everyone stopped at the image without trying to link it to our musical approach. The humorous aspect has also been completely erased."
Constantly compared to Patti Smith (at least in her early days), PJ Harvey bothers some (but fascinates many others) because she deviates from the usual pattern of love songs. She even refutes any filiation with female rock! "I'm not at all interested in belonging to the clan of rock girls," she told us. "I don't even know Patti Smith, who is often cited as a source of inspiration. I've only heard her album "Horses" once. I thought it was beautiful, but I don't know if I look like her in any way."
PJ Harvey: "It's usually anger that motivates my songs".
And when PJ Harvey wrote songs like "Dry" or "Happy and Bleeding" (from her first album in 1992), she addressed typically female problems such as frigidity and the menstrual cycle without hesitation but with subtlety. In addition, she created an abrupt record that is among the most interesting of the '90s... "It's usually anger that motivates each of my songs. I never feel the need to embellish or make them up. You have to take them as they are without unnecessary embellishments. When I put a song on paper, it's completely finished. I have been dwelling on it for a long time in my mind and it is just waiting to be recorded without additional changes, even if, naturally, it will evolve over the course of the concerts."
After a long silence, PJ Harvey recorded the very dark "I Inside The Old Year Dying" in the summer of 2023, followed by a long tour that will soon come to an end in Los Angeles.
(AK - Photo: Christophe Dehousse / Music Belgium Photos)
Photo: PJ Harvey on the stage of the Cirque Royal in Brussels (Belgium) on October 9, 2023, the same day as her birthday! © (Christophe Dehousse)
Catch the last days of her tour:
11/12 October: The Masonic - San Francisco, CA (USA)
15 October: Greek Theatre - Los Angeles, CA (USA)