PJ Harvey
Encyclopedia
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

, singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and occasional artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

, organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...

, bass
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

, saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

, and most recently, the autoharp
Autoharp
The autoharp is a musical string instrument having a series of chord bars attached to dampers, which, when depressed, mute all of the strings other than those that form the desired chord. Despite its name, the autoharp is not a harp at all, but a chorded zither. -History:There is debate over the...

.

Harvey began her career in 1988 when she joined local band Automatic Dlamini, featuring long-term collaborator John Parish
John Parish
John Parish is a British musician and producer best known for his work with singer and songwriter PJ Harvey,. His sister is the actress Sarah Parish.-Partial discography:Solo*Rosie *How Animals Move...

, as a vocalist and saxophone player. In 1991, she formed an eponymous trio and subsequently began her professional career. The trio released two studio albums, Dry
Dry (album)
Dry is the debut album by PJ Harvey. It was recorded at the Icehouse, Yeovil, UK, and released in the UK on Too Pure , and subsequently on Indigo Records in the US...

(1992) and Rid of Me
Rid of Me
Rid of Me is the second studio album by British musician PJ Harvey. It was released by Island Records in May 1993, approximately one year after the release of her critically acclaimed debut album Dry...

(1993) before disbanding, after which Harvey continued as a solo artist. Since 1995, she has released a further six studio albums with collaborations from various musicians including John Parish, former bandmate Rob Ellis, Mick Harvey
Mick Harvey
Michael John Harvey , is an Australian rock musician, composer, arranger and record producer. He is best known for his long-time collaboration with the singer and songwriter Nick Cave...

, and Eric Drew Feldman
Eric Drew Feldman
Eric Drew Feldman is an American keyboard and bass guitar player. Feldman has worked with Captain Beefheart, Fear, Snakefinger, The Residents, Pere Ubu, Pixies, dEUS, Katell Keineg, Frank Black, The Polyphonic Spree, Tripping Daisy, Reid Paley, Charlotte Hatherley, Custard, and PJ Harvey.He was...

 and has also worked extensively with record producer Flood.

Among the accolades she has received are the 2001 and 2011 Mercury Prize
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize and currently known as the Barclaycard Mercury Prize for sponsorship reasons, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album from the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was established by the British Phonographic Industry and British...

 for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is the fifth studio album by English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey, released 23 October 2000 on Island Records. Recorded during March to April 2000, the album contains themes of love that are tied into Harvey's affection for New York City...

(2000) and Let England Shake
Let England Shake
Let England Shake is the tenth studio album by PJ Harvey, released on 11 February 2011 in the UK. Work on it began around the time of White Chalks release in 2007, though it is a departure from the piano-driven introspection of that album. The album was written over a period of two-and-a-half...

(2011) respectively—the only artist to have been awarded the prize twice—seven BRIT Award
Brit Awards
The Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual pop music awards. The name was originally a shortened form of "British", "Britain" or "Britannia", but subsequently became a backronym for British Record Industry Trust...

 nominations, six Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

 nominations and two further Mercury Prize nominations. Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

awarded her 1992's Best New Artist and Best Singer Songwriter and 1995's Artist of the Year, and listed Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love
To Bring You My Love
To Bring You My Love is the third studio album by British musician and singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. It was released by Island Records in February 1995. Recorded after the break-up of the PJ Harvey trio it stands as her first proper solo album...

(1995) on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. In 2011, she was awarded for Outstanding Contribution To Music at the NME Awards
NME Awards
The NME Awards is an annual music awards show in the United Kingdom, founded by the music magazine, NME .The first awards show was held in 1953 as the NME Poll Winners Concerts, shortly after the founding of the magazine....

.

Early life

Harvey was born in Bridport
Bridport
Bridport is a market town in Dorset, England. Located near the coast at the western end of Chesil Beach at the confluence of the River Brit and its Asker and Simene tributaries, it originally thrived as a fishing port and rope-making centre...

, Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

 on 9 October, 1969 as the second child to Ray and Eva Harvey, a sculptor and stonemason
Stonemasonry
The craft of stonemasonry has existed since the dawn of civilization - creating buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone from the earth. These materials have been used to construct many of the long-lasting, ancient monuments, artifacts, cathedrals, and cities in a wide variety of cultures...

 respectively, and brought up on the family's sheep farm in Corscombe
Corscombe
Corscombe is a small village in west Dorset, England, halfway between Yeovil and Beaminster. The village has a population of 465 .The musician Polly Jean Harvey is a former resident....

. During her childhood, she attended school in nearby Beaminster
Beaminster
Beaminster is a small town and civil parish in the West Dorset district of Dorset in South West England, at the head of the valley of the River Brit. Beaminster is south of Bristol, west of Bournemouth, east of Exeter and northwest of the county town of Dorchester...

 and her parents introduced her to music that would later influence her work, including blues music, Captain Beefheart
Captain Beefheart
Don Van Vliet January 15, 1941 December 17, 2010) was an American musician, singer-songwriter and artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 12...

 and Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

.

As a teenager, Harvey began learning saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

 and joined an eight-piece instrumental group Boulogne, based in Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

. She also had other musical endeavors during this time with folk trio The Polekats, in which she played guitar and with whom she wrote some of her earliest material, and as a rhythm guitarist
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...

 in The Three Stoned Weaklings, a three-piece band formed by Paddy Ashdown, Gus Mackinlay and Graeme White. After finishing school, Harvey attended Yeovil College
Yeovil College
Yeovil College is a tertiary institution and further education college based in Yeovil, Somerset, England. Its main campus is on Mudford Road, Yeovil, but the College also operates the North Dorset Skills Centre in Shaftesbury and the Construction Skills Centre, Lufton, Yeovil, not far from the...

 and studied a visual arts foundation course.

Automatic Dlamini: 1988–1991

In July 1988, Harvey became a member of Automatic Dlamini, a band based in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

 and with whom she gained extensive ensemble-playing experience. Formed by John Parish
John Parish
John Parish is a British musician and producer best known for his work with singer and songwriter PJ Harvey,. His sister is the actress Sarah Parish.-Partial discography:Solo*Rosie *How Animals Move...

 in 1983, the band consisted of a rotating line-up that at various times included Rob Ellis and Ian Olliver, two later members of the PJ Harvey Trio. Harvey met Parish through a mutual friend, Jeremy Hogg, the band's slide guitarist, in 1987. Providing saxophone, guitars and background vocals, she travelled extensively during the band's early days, including performances in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 in order to support the band's debut studio album, The D is for Drum. A second European tour took place throughout June and July 1989. Following the tour, the band recorded Here Catch, Shouted His Father, their second studio album, between late 1989 and early 1990. This is the only Automatic Dlamini material to feature Harvey and remains unreleased, however, bootleg versions
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...

 of the album are circulating. In January 1991, Harvey left the band to form her own band with former bandmates Ellis and Olliver, however, she formed lasting personal and professional relationships with certain members, especially Parish, who she has referred to as her "musical soulmate." Parish would subsequently contribute to, and sometimes co-produce, Harvey's solo studio albums and tour with her a number of times. As a duo, Parish and Harvey have recorded two collaborative albums where Parish composed the music and Harvey penned the lyrics. Additionally, Parish's girlfriend in the late 1980s was photographer Maria Mochnacz. She and Harvey became close friends and Mochnacz went on to shoot and design most of Harvey's album artwork and music videos, contributing significantly to her public image.

Harvey said of her time while in Automatic Dlamini: "I ended up not singing very much but I was just happy to learn how to play the guitar. I wrote a lot during the time I was with them but my first songs were crap. I was listening to a lot of Irish folk music at the time, so the songs were folky
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 and full of penny whistles and stuff. It was ages before I felt ready to perform my own songs in front of other people," and she also credits Parish for teaching her how to perform in front of audiences, saying "after the experience with John's band and seeing him perform I found it was enormously helpful to me as a performer to engage with people in the audience, and I probably did learn that from him, amongst other things."

PJ Harvey Trio: 1991–1993

In January 1991, following her departure from Automatic Dlamini, Harvey formed her own band with former bandmates Rob Ellis and Ian Olliver. Harvey decided to eponymously name the trio PJ Harvey after rejecting other names as "nothing felt right at all or just suggested the wrong type of sound" and also to allow her to continue music as a solo artist. The trio consisted of Harvey on vocals and guitars, Ellis on drums and backing vocals, and Olliver on bass. Olliver later departed to rejoin the still-active Automatic Dlamini and then went on to form The Dub Liberators. He was subsequently replaced with Steve Vaughan. The trio's "disastrous" debut performance was held at a skittle alley
Skittles (sport)
Skittles is an old European lawn game, a variety of bowling, from which ten-pin bowling, duckpin bowling, and candlepin bowling in the United States, and five-pin bowling in Canada are descended. In the United Kingdom, the game remains a popular pub game in England and Wales, though it tends to be...

 in Sherborne's Antelope Hotel in April 1991. Harvey later recounted the event saying: "we started playing and I suppose there was about fifty people there, and during the first song we cleared the hall. There was only about two people left. And a woman came up to us, came up to my drummer, it was only a three piece, while we were playing and shouted at him 'Don't you realize nobody likes you! We'll pay you, you can stop playing, we'll still pay you!'"

The band relocated to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in June 1991 when Harvey applied to study sculpture at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, still undecided as to her future career. During this time, the band recorded a set of demo
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...

 recordings and distributed them to record labels. Independent label Too Pure
Too Pure
Too Pure is a London-based independent record label that was formed in 1990 by Richard Roberts and Paul Cox.-History:Too Pure started off as a small experimental label and had built their reputation by releasing primarily alternative/independent music which they felt was being ignored by the major...

 agreed to release the band's debut single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

 "Dress
Dress (song)
"Dress" is the debut single by English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey from her debut album Dry Released in 1991, two promotional music videos were also recorded.-Background and history:...

" in October 1991 and later signed PJ Harvey. "Dress" received mass critical acclaim upon its release and was voted Single of the Week in Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...

by guest reviewer John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...

, who admired "the way Polly Jean seems crushed by the weight of her own songs and arrangements, as if the air is literally being sucked out of them... admirable if not always enjoyable." However, Too Pure provided little promotion for the single and critics claim that "Melody Maker had more to do with the success of the "Dress" single than Too Pure Records." A week after its release, the band recorded a live radio session for Peel on BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...

 on 29 October and recorded "Oh, My Lover," "Victory," "Sheela-Na-Gig
Sheela-Na-Gig (song)
"Sheela-Na-Gig" is a song by English alternative rock singer-songwriter PJ Harvey, written solely by Harvey. The song was released as the second single from her debut studio album, Dry, in February 1992. The single was the second, and final, single from Dry and only single from the album to enter...

," and "Water."

The following February, the trio released "Sheela-Na-Gig" as their equally-acclaimed second single and their debut studio album, Dry
Dry (album)
Dry is the debut album by PJ Harvey. It was recorded at the Icehouse, Yeovil, UK, and released in the UK on Too Pure , and subsequently on Indigo Records in the US...

(1992), followed in March. Like the singles preceding it, Dry received an overwhelming international critical response. After the release of the album Harvey suffered a nervous breakdown. The album was cited by Kurt Cobain
Kurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain was an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana...

 of Nirvana
Nirvana (band)
Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...

 as his sixteenth favourite album ever in his posthumously-published Journals
Journals (Cobain)
Journals is a collection of writings and drawings by Kurt Cobain, lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana. Though the content is undated, it is arranged in an approximation of chronological order, starting with a letter Cobain wrote to Dale Crover in 1988, and ending with a rant about...

and also in Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...

. Rolling Stone also named Harvey as Songwriter of the Year. A limited edition double LP version of Dry was released alongside the regular version of the album, containing both the original and demo versions of each track, called Dry Demonstration,and the band also received significant coverage at the Reading Festival in 1992.

Island Records
Island Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...

 signed the trio amid a major label bidding war in mid-1992 and in December 1992, the trio travelled to Cannon Falls, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 to record the follow-up to Dry with "controversial" producer Steve Albini
Steve Albini
Steven Frank Albini is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman, and Flour, and is currently a member of Shellac...

. Prior to recording with Albini, the band recorded a second session with John Peel on 22 September and recorded a version of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited
Highway 61 Revisited (song)
"Highway 61 Revisited" is the title track of Bob Dylan's 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. It was also released as the B-side to the single "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" later the same year...

," and two new songs "Me Jane" and "Ecstasy." The recording sessions with Albini took place at Pachyderm Recording Studio
Pachyderm Studio
Pachyderm Recording Studio is a residential recording studio located in rural Cannon Falls, Minnesota, United States, 35.8 mi southeast of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. It is located in a secluded old-growth forest with a vibrant trout stream. The studio was founded in 1988...

 and resulted in the band's major label debut Rid of Me
Rid of Me
Rid of Me is the second studio album by British musician PJ Harvey. It was released by Island Records in May 1993, approximately one year after the release of her critically acclaimed debut album Dry...

(1993). The album was released on 4 May, 1993 and was promoted by two main singles, "50ft Queenie
50ft Queenie
"50ft Queenie" is the third single by English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey, and the first from her second studio album Rid of Me. It is performed by Harvey's eponymous trio, consisting of Harvey on vocals and guitar, Rob Ellis on drums, and Steve Vaughan on bass...

" and "Man-Size." To promote the release of the album, the band began touring in the United Kingdom in May and then to the United States in June, continuing there during the summer. However, during the American leg of the tour, internal friction started to form between the members of the trio. Deborah Frost, writing for Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

, noticed "an ever widening personal gulf" between the band members, and quoted Harvey as saying "It makes me sad. I wouldn’t have got here without them. I needed them back then-badly. But I don't need them anymore. We all changed as people." Despite the tour's personal downsides, footage from live performances was compiled and released on the long-form video Reeling with PJ Harvey (1993).

The band's final tour was to support U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...

 in August 1993, after which the trio officially disbanded. In her final appearance on American television in September 1993, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno is an American late-night talk show hosted by Jay Leno that initially aired from May 25, 1992 to May 29, 2009, and resumed production on March 1, 2010. The fourth incarnation of the Tonight Show franchise made its debut on May 25, 1992, three days following Johnny...

, Harvey performed a solo version of "Rid of Me." As Rid of Me sold substantially more copies than Dry, 4-Track Demos
4-Track Demos
4-Track Demos is an album of demos by British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. It was released in October 1993 by Island Records. It consists of 8 demos of songs from her previous album, Rid of Me, along with 6 demos of some unreleased tracks which never made it to being recorded with the three-piece...

, a compilation album of demos for the album, was released in October and inaugurated her career as a solo artist.

Solo career: 1993-present

As Harvey embarked on her solo career, Harvey explored collaborations with other musicians. In 1995, she released her third studio album, To Bring You My Love
To Bring You My Love
To Bring You My Love is the third studio album by British musician and singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. It was released by Island Records in February 1995. Recorded after the break-up of the PJ Harvey trio it stands as her first proper solo album...

, featuring former bandmate John Parish, Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian alternative rock band, formed in Melbourne in 1983. The band is fronted by Nick Cave and has featured international personnel throughout their career.-Formation and early releases :...

 multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey
Mick Harvey
Michael John Harvey , is an Australian rock musician, composer, arranger and record producer. He is best known for his long-time collaboration with the singer and songwriter Nick Cave...

 and Belgian drummer Jean-Marc Butty; all of whom would continue to perform and record with Harvey throughout her career. The album was also her first material to be produced by Flood. Both a more blue-influenced and more futuristic record than its predecessors, To Bring You My Love showcased Harvey broadening her musical style to include strings, organs and synthesizers and also generated a surprise modern rock
Modern rock
Modern rock is a rock format commonly found on commercial radio; the format consists primarily of the alternative rock genre...

 radio hit in the United States with its lead single, "Down by the Water." Three consecutive singles—"C'mon Billy," "Send His Love to Me" and "Long Snake Moan"—were also moderately successful. During the successive tours for the album, Harvey also experimented with her image and stage persona, a style she later dubbed "Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....

 on acid
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...

." The album was a worldwide commercial and critical success, selling over one million copies in the United Kingdom alone, according to BPI
British Phonographic Industry
The British Phonographic Industry is the British record industry's trade association.-Structure:Its membership comprises hundreds of music companies including all four "major" record companies , associate members such as manufacturers and distributors, and hundreds of independent music companies...

. In the United States, the album also received a positive critical response and was voted Album of the Year by The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...

, Rolling Stone, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...

, People
People (magazine)
In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...

, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

and the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

. Rolling Stone also named Harvey 1995's Artist of the Year Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...

also ranked the album third in The Greatest 90 Albums of the '90s, behind Nirvana's Nevermind
Nevermind
Nevermind is the second studio album by the American rock band Nirvana, released on September 24, 1991. Produced by Butch Vig, Nevermind was the group's first release on DGC Records...

(1991) and Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet
Fear of a Black Planet
Fear of a Black Planet is the third studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released April 10, 1990, on Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. Production for the album was handled by the group's production team The Bomb Squad, who expanded on the dense, sample-layered sound of the...

(1990).

In 1996, following the international success of To Bring You My Love and other collaborations, Harvey began composing material that would end up on her fourth studio album, during what she referred to as "an incredibly low patch." The material diverged significantly from her former work and introduced electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...

 elements into her song-writing, similar to The Smashing Pumpkins
The Smashing Pumpkins
The Smashing Pumpkins are an American alternative rock band that formed in Chicago, Illinois in 1988. Formed by Billy Corgan frontman and James Iha , the band has included Jimmy Chamberlin , D'arcy Wretzky , and currently includes Jeff Schroeder Mike Byrne , and Nicole Fiorentino The Smashing...

 Adore
Adore (album)
Adore is the fourth album by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released in June 1998 by Virgin Records. After the multi-platinum success of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and a subsequent yearlong world tour, follow-up Adore was considered "one of the most anticipated...

(1998). During recording sessions in 1997, original PJ Harvey Trio drummer Rob Ellis rejoined Harvey's band and Flood was hired again as producer. The sessions, which continued into April the following year, resulted in Is This Desire?
Is This Desire?
Is This Desire? is a 1998 album by British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey.Recorded on and off in Dorset and London between April 1997 and April 1998, it was co-produced by Flood, Head and Harvey herself, and featured instrumental contributions from Rob Ellis, John Parish, Mick Harvey, Eric Drew...

(1998). Though originally released to mixed reviews in September 1998, the album was a success and received a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

 nomination for Best Alternative Music Performance. The album's lead single, "A Perfect Day Elise," was moderately successful in the United Kingdom, peaking at number 25 on the UK Single Chart, her most successful single to date.

She reunited with her old bandmate Rob Ellis and multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey
Mick Harvey
Michael John Harvey , is an Australian rock musician, composer, arranger and record producer. He is best known for his long-time collaboration with the singer and songwriter Nick Cave...

 – who is no relation – for her 2000 album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is the fifth studio album by English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey, released 23 October 2000 on Island Records. Recorded during March to April 2000, the album contains themes of love that are tied into Harvey's affection for New York City...

. Written in Dorset, Paris and New York, the album was a critical and commercial success, selling over one million copies worldwide and taking the Mercury Music Prize in the following year. It mixed uncharacteristically lush, melodic pop rock
Pop rock
Pop rock is a music genre which mixes a catchy pop style and light lyrics in its guitar-based rock songs. There are varying definitions of the term, ranging from a slower and mellower form of rock music to a subgenre of pop music...

 sounds with the gritty, thrashing, guitar-driven punk energy of her earlier records. Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...

 singer Thom Yorke
Thom Yorke
Thomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...

 was featured on three of the album's songs; he took lead vocal duties on "This Mess We're In", and provided backing vocals for two others.

In 2001 she topped a readers' poll conducted by Q magazine
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...

 of the 100 Greatest Women in Rock Music. Her sixth studio album, Uh Huh Her, was released 31 May 2004. For the first time since 4-Track Demos, Harvey produced it alone and played every instrument but the drums. She told Rolling Stone "when I'm working on a new record, the most important thing is to not repeat myself ... that's always my aim: to try and cover new ground and really to challenge myself. Because I'm in this for learning."
In May 2006, Harvey played her first UK gig of the year, revealing that her new album would be almost entirely piano-based. Later in 2006, she released her first concert DVD, Please Leave Quietly, directed by Maria Mochnacz, which contained songs from her entire career as well as behind-the-scene video clips between performances. On 23 October 2006, she released The Peel Sessions 1991–2004
The Peel Sessions 1991–2004
The Peel Sessions 1991–2004 is an album by British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey, released in 2006. It is a compilation of tracks especially recorded for broadcast on John Peel's Radio 1 programme.-Track listing:...

. In November 2006 she started working on her seventh studio album, White Chalk
White Chalk
White Chalk is the eighth studio album by PJ Harvey, released on 24 September 2007 in the UK, and on 2 October 2007 in the US.Work on the album started in 2006, with producer Flood and John Parish, who also worked on her To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire? albums...

, with Flood, John Parish
John Parish
John Parish is a British musician and producer best known for his work with singer and songwriter PJ Harvey,. His sister is the actress Sarah Parish.-Partial discography:Solo*Rosie *How Animals Move...

, and Eric Drew Feldman
Eric Drew Feldman
Eric Drew Feldman is an American keyboard and bass guitar player. Feldman has worked with Captain Beefheart, Fear, Snakefinger, The Residents, Pere Ubu, Pixies, dEUS, Katell Keineg, Frank Black, The Polyphonic Spree, Tripping Daisy, Reid Paley, Charlotte Hatherley, Custard, and PJ Harvey.He was...

. It was released in Europe on 24 September 2007, and in the United States on 2 October. The album marked a radical departure from her usual style, consisting mainly of piano ballads. Of this album Harvey said: "When I listen to the record I feel in a different universe, really, and I’m not sure whether it’s in the past or in the future," she says, laughing quietly. "The record confuses me, that’s what I like – it doesn’t feel of this time right now, but I’m not sure whether it’s 100 years ago or 100 years in the future. It just sounds really weird."

Her next album, Let England Shake
Let England Shake
Let England Shake is the tenth studio album by PJ Harvey, released on 11 February 2011 in the UK. Work on it began around the time of White Chalks release in 2007, though it is a departure from the piano-driven introspection of that album. The album was written over a period of two-and-a-half...

, was released on 14 February 2011 and on 6 September 2011, won the Mercury Prize
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize and currently known as the Barclaycard Mercury Prize for sponsorship reasons, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album from the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was established by the British Phonographic Industry and British...

, making her the first artist to win the award twice.

Collaborations

Besides her own work, she contributed to eight tracks on Vol. 9 & 10 of Josh Homme's The Desert Sessions
The Desert Sessions
The Desert Sessions are a musical collective series, founded by Josh Homme in 1997. Artists such as Brant Bjork, PJ Harvey, Jeordie White The Desert Sessions are a musical collective series, founded by Josh Homme in 1997. Artists such as Brant Bjork, PJ Harvey, Jeordie White The Desert Sessions are...

and appeared on Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...

's Murder Ballads
Murder Ballads
Murder Ballads is the ninth studio album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released in 1996 on Mute Records. As its title suggests, the album consists of new and traditional murder ballads, a genre of songs that relays the details of crimes of passion."Where the Wild Roses Grow," a duet featuring...

(on the song "Henry Lee" and the Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

 cover "Death Is Not the End") and Tricky
Tricky
Tricky is an English musician and actor. As a producer and a musician, he is noted for a dark, rich and layered sound and a whispering sprechgesang lyrical style. Culturally, Tricky encourages an intertwining of societies, particularly in his musical fusion of rock and hip hop, high art and pop...

's Angels with Dirty Faces
Angels With Dirty Faces (Tricky album)
Angels with Dirty Faces is the fourth album of Bristol, England rapper/producer Tricky, released in 1998. The title is taken from the film of the same name....

(on the song "Broken Homes"). She lent guitar, bass and background vocals to Sparklehorse
Sparklehorse
Sparklehorse was an American indie rock band led by the singer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous.-History:Sparklehorse's first album, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot featuring Bob Rupe of the Silos and Cracker, was a modest college radio success...

's album It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life (album)
It's a Wonderful Life is the third album by Virginian indie rock group Sparklehorse, released in 2001. The album features appearances by Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, John Parish, Nina Persson, Vic Chesnutt, and Dave Fridmann.-Track listing:...

(on the songs "Eyepennies" and "Piano Fire"). In 1996 she recorded a collaborative album Dance Hall at Louse Point
Dance Hall at Louse Point
Dance Hall at Louse Point is a 1996 album by John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey. Parish wrote and played the music, while Harvey sang vocals and wrote the lyrics...

with Parish under the name Polly Jean Harvey. Parish wrote all the music, and Harvey the lyrics, with the exception of the song "Is That All There Is?
Is That All There Is?
"Is That All There Is?" is a song written by American songwriting team Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller during the 1960s. It became a hit for American singer Peggy Lee from her recording in November 1969...

", which was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
Jerome "Jerry" Leiber and Mike Stoller were American songwriting and record producing partners. Stoller was the composer and Leiber the lyricist. Their most famous songs include "Hound Dog", "Jailhouse Rock", "Kansas City", "Stand By Me" Jerome "Jerry" Leiber (April 25, 1933 – August 22, 2011)...

 and made famous by Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and...

 in 1969. Harvey has since gone on to produce Tiffany Anders' Funny Cry Happy Gift. Harvey produced, performed on and wrote five songs for Marianne Faithfull's
Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....

 2004 album Before the Poison
Before The Poison
Before the Poison is the 17th album by Marianne Faithfull, recorded in 2003 and released in 2005.- Overview :The album has a dark and fatalistic mood, which Faithfull attributes partially to the post-9/11 world....

. Harvey sang vocals on two tracks of Mark Lanegan
Mark Lanegan
Mark Lanegan is an American rock musician and songwriter. Lanegan began his music career in the 1980s, forming the grunge group Screaming Trees with Gary Lee Conner, Van Conner and Mark Pickerel. During his time in the band Lanegan would start a low-key solo career...

's 2004 album Bubblegum. Harvey reunited with John Parish to follow-up 1996's Dance Hall with A Woman a Man Walked By
A Woman a Man Walked By
A Woman A Man Walked By is an album by PJ Harvey and John Parish, released on 30 March 2009 on Island Records.-Background:It is the second collaboration between Harvey and Parish, following 1996's Dance Hall at Louse Point. The album was recorded in Bristol and Dorset, and mixed by Flood. This...

, which was released on 30 March 2009.

In January 2009, a new stage production of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

's Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama...

opened on Broadway, directed by Ian Rickson and starring Mary-Louise Parker
Mary-Louise Parker
Mary-Louise Parker is an American actress, known for her current lead role on Showtime's television series Weeds portraying Nancy Botwin, for which she has received several nominations and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2006...

 in the title role, featuring an original score of incidental music written by Harvey. The production was poorly received, and little or no mention was made of Harvey's contribution.

Non-musical work

Outside her better-known musical career, Harvey appeared as Magdalena, a modern-day character based on Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of "seven demons", conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses...

 in Hal Hartley
Hal Hartley
Hal Hartley is an American film director, screenwriter, producer composer, who became a key figure in the American independent film movement of the 1980s and 1990s...

's 1998 film The Book of Life, and had a cameo as a singing Bunny Girl in the Sarah Miles
Sarah Miles
-Early life and career:Sarah Miles was born in the small town of Ingatestone, Essex, in South East England.She first attended Roedean but at the age of 15 she enrolled at RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art...

 directed short A Bunny Girl's Tale. She is also an accomplished sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

 who has had pieces exhibited at the Lamont Gallery and the Bridport Arts Centre. In 2010 she was invited to be guest designer for the Summer issue of Francis Ford Coppola's
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...

 literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story
Zoetrope: All-Story
Zoetrope: All-Story is an American literary magazine that was launched in 1997 by Francis Ford Coppola. Blooming from Francis Coppola's "Crazy Idea Department," All-Story is devoted to showcasing the most promising voices in short-fiction...

. The issue featured Harvey's paintings and drawings alongside short stories by Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

, Ann Packer
Ann Packer (author)
Ann Packer is an American novelist and short story writer, perhaps best known for her critically acclaimed first novel The Dive From Clausen's Pier. She is the recipient of a James Michener Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship...

, and others.

Musical style, influence and image

Harvey has been noted to dislike repeating herself in her music, resulting in very different-sounding albums.
She has experimented with such musical styles as rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

, pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

, electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...

, and folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

. She is also known for changing her appearance from album to album by altering her mode of dress or hairstyle. Each look is then incorporated into the album's artwork, music videos, and live performances. She often works closely with friend and photographer Maria Mochnacz in developing the visual style of each album.

At an early age, she was introduced by her parents to blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 music, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 and art rock
Art rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, with influences from art, avant-garde, and classical music. The first usage of the term, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, was in 1968. Influenced by the work of The Beatles, most notably their Sgt...

, which, she told Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

in 1995, would later influence her: "I was brought up listening to John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...

, to Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....

, to Robert Johnson, and a lot of Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

 and Captain Beefheart
Captain Beefheart
Don Van Vliet January 15, 1941 December 17, 2010) was an American musician, singer-songwriter and artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 12...

. So I was exposed to all these very compassionate musicians at a very young age, and that's always remained in me and seems to surface more as I get older. I think the way we are as we get older is a result of what we knew when we were children." Her time was then spent listening to new romantic
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...

 bands such as Soft Cell
Soft Cell
Soft Cell are an English synthpop duo who came to prominence in the early 1980s. They consist of vocalist Marc Almond and instrumentalist David Ball. The duo is most widely known for their 1981 worldwide hit version of "Tainted Love" and platinum debut Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret...

, Duran Duran
Duran Duran
Duran Duran are an English band, formed in Birmingham in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven "Second British Invasion" of the United States...

 and Spandau Ballet
Spandau Ballet
Spandau Ballet are a British band formed in London in the late 1970s. Initially inspired by, and an integral part of, the New Romantic fashion, their music has featured a mixture of funk, jazz, soul and synthpop. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s, achieving ten Top Ten singles...

. In her teenage years, she became a fan of American indie rock
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...

 bands like Pixies
Pixies (band)
The Pixies are an American alternative rock band formed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1986. The group consists of Black Francis , Joey Santiago , Kim Deal , and David Lovering . While the Pixies found only modest success in their home country, they were significantly more successful in the United...

, Television
Television (band)
Television was an American rock band, formed in New York City in 1973. They are best known for the album Marquee Moon and widely regarded as one of the founders of "punk" and New Wave music. Television was part of the early 1970s New York underground rock scene, along with bands like the Patti...

 and Slint
Slint
Slint was an American rock band consisting of Brian McMahan , David Pajo , Britt Walford , Todd Brashear and Ethan Buckler...

, though not, as many critics have suspected, Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....

 (a frequent comparison that Harvey dismisses as "lazy journalism
Lazy journalism
Lazy journalism is a term used to describe situations where journalists use shortcuts and/or simple stereotypes to explain, sometimes sensationalising, ideas or thoughts relating to a story.-Example:...

"). More recently she has claimed inspiration from Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

, Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...

 soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...

 and classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

 composers like Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...

, Samuel Barber
Samuel Barber
Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

 and Henryk Górecki
Henryk Górecki
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki was a composer of contemporary classical music. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during...

.

Around the time of To Bring You My Love, Harvey began experimenting with her image and adopting an elaborate, theatrical, almost cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 edge to her live shows. Where she once performed on stage in simple black leggings, turtleneck sweaters and Doc Martens, she now began performing in ballgowns, pink catsuits, wigs and garish, vamp
Vamp
Vamp may refer to:* VaMP, the first autonomous car that drove long distances in traffic* Vamp , a Norwegian folk music band* Vamp, a character in the Metal Gear series of video games* Vamp , in Gobots toyline and cartoon...

ish make-up – including false eyelashes and fingernails – and using stage props like a broomstick and a Ziggy Stardust-style flashlight microphone. She denied the influence of drag
Drag (clothing)
Drag is used for any clothing carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of another gender. The origin of the term "drag" is unknown, but it may have originated in Polari, a gay street argot in England in the early...

, Kabuki
Kabuki
is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...

 or performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

 on her new image, a look she affectionately dubbed "Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....

 on acid
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...

" in a 1996 Spin interview, but admitted that "it's that combination of being quite elegant and funny and revolting, all at the same time, that appeals to me. I actually find wearing make-up like that, sort of smeared around, as extremely beautiful. Maybe that’s just my twisted sense of beauty." However, she later told Dazed & Confused magazine, "that was kind of a mask. It was much more of a mask than I’ve ever had. I was very lost as a person, at that point. I had no sense of self left at all", and has never again repeated the overt theatricality of the To Bring You My Love tour. She also sang the theme song from Philip Ridley
Philip Ridley
Philip Ridley is a British artist working with various media.- Biography :Ridley was born in Bethnal Green, in the East End of London, where he still lives and works. He studied painting at St. Martin’s School of Art and his work has been exhibited throughout Europe and Japan...

's adult fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

, The Passion of Darkly Noon
The Passion of Darkly Noon
The Passion of Darkly Noon is a 1995 film written and directed by Philip Ridley, starring Brendan Fraser in the title role, and co-starring Ashley Judd and Viggo Mortensen.-Cast:*Brendan Fraser... Darkly Noon*Ashley Judd... Callie...

.

Personal life

Offstage, Harvey has acquired a reputation for eccentricity to match her music; for example, Steve Albini
Steve Albini
Steven Frank Albini is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman, and Flour, and is currently a member of Shellac...

 claimed she ate nothing but potatoes while making Rid of Me. Harvey describes herself as "an extremely quiet person, who doesn't go out much, doesn't talk to people", and rejects the notion that her songs are autobiographical. She told The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

in 1998, "The tortured artist myth is rampant. People paint me as some kind of black witchcraft
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...

-practising devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...

 from hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...

, that I have to be twisted and dark to do what I am doing. It's a load of rubbish". She later told Spin, "Some critics have taken my writing so literally to the point that they'll listen to 'Down by the Water' and believe I have actually given birth to a child and drowned her." In 2006, Blender
Blender (magazine)
Blender was an American music magazine that billed itself as "the ultimate guide to music and more". It was also known for sometimes steamy pictorials of celebrities....

included her in their list of the hottest women of rock, calling her a "blues-rock
Blues-rock
Blues rock is a hybrid musical genre combining bluesy improvisations over the 12-bar blues and extended boogie jams with rock and roll styles. The core of the blues rock sound is created by the electric guitar, piano, bass guitar and drum kit, with the electric guitar usually amplified through a...

 sorceress trafficking in social politics and dark, tormented songwriting." In a 2007 interview, Harvey stated that she would like to reunite with fellow artists Tori Amos
Tori Amos
Tori Amos is an American pianist, singer-songwriter and composer. She was at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s and was noteworthy early in her career as one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument...

 and Björk
Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir , known as Björk , is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her eclectic musical style has achieved popular acknowledgement and popularity within many musical genres, such as rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical and folk...

, as all three were featured on the cover of Q magazine
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...

 in 1994.

Harvey had a relationship with Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...

 in 1996 and collaborated with him on two songs on the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian alternative rock band, formed in Melbourne in 1983. The band is fronted by Nick Cave and has featured international personnel throughout their career.-Formation and early releases :...

' album, Murder Ballads
Murder Ballads
Murder Ballads is the ninth studio album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released in 1996 on Mute Records. As its title suggests, the album consists of new and traditional murder ballads, a genre of songs that relays the details of crimes of passion."Where the Wild Roses Grow," a duet featuring...

. Their subsequent break-up also influenced Cave's follow-up album, The Boatman's Call
The Boatman's Call
The Boatman's Call is the tenth studio album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released in 1997. The album, which is entirely piano-based and a departure from the band's post-punk catalogue, remains one of the most critically acclaimed releases of Nick Cave's career.-Background and...

with songs such as "Into My Arms
Into My Arms
"Into My Arms" is a song written by Nick Cave, and released as the first single from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' tenth studio album The Boatman's Call in 1997. The single, released on 27 January 1997, was pressed on 7" vinyl, as well as a standard CD single...

", "West Country Girl" and "Black Hair" being specifically about her. She has one older brother, Saul, and four nieces and nephews through him. Harvey has said she would like to have children, adding, "I wouldn't consider it unless I was married. I would have to meet someone that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. That's the only person who I would want to be the father of my children. Maybe that will never happen. I obviously see it in a very rational way but I'd love to have children."

In April 2008, she was a guest on Private Passions
Private Passions
Private Passions is a weekly music discussion programme which has been running for over 10 years on BBC Radio 3, presented by the composer Michael Berkeley...

– the biographical music discussion programme hosted by Michael Berkeley
Michael Berkeley
Michael Berkeley is a British composer and broadcaster on music.-Early life:His father was the composer Sir Lennox Berkeley...

 on BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

 – and on the show, selected some of her favourite music, including pieces by Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...

, Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...

, Howe Gelb
Howe Gelb
Howe Gelb is an American singer-songwriter, musician and record producer based in Tucson, Arizona.-Projects:Gelb's approach to music is collaborative and he has recorded with a number of side projects...

 and Nina Simone
Nina Simone
Eunice Kathleen Waymon , better known by her stage name Nina Simone , was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music...

.

Discography


Studio albums
  • Dry
    Dry (album)
    Dry is the debut album by PJ Harvey. It was recorded at the Icehouse, Yeovil, UK, and released in the UK on Too Pure , and subsequently on Indigo Records in the US...

    (1992)
  • Rid of Me
    Rid of Me
    Rid of Me is the second studio album by British musician PJ Harvey. It was released by Island Records in May 1993, approximately one year after the release of her critically acclaimed debut album Dry...

    (1993)
  • To Bring You My Love
    To Bring You My Love
    To Bring You My Love is the third studio album by British musician and singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. It was released by Island Records in February 1995. Recorded after the break-up of the PJ Harvey trio it stands as her first proper solo album...

    (1995)
  • Is This Desire?
    Is This Desire?
    Is This Desire? is a 1998 album by British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey.Recorded on and off in Dorset and London between April 1997 and April 1998, it was co-produced by Flood, Head and Harvey herself, and featured instrumental contributions from Rob Ellis, John Parish, Mick Harvey, Eric Drew...

    (1998)
  • Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
    Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
    Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is the fifth studio album by English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey, released 23 October 2000 on Island Records. Recorded during March to April 2000, the album contains themes of love that are tied into Harvey's affection for New York City...

    (2000)
  • Uh Huh Her (2004)
  • White Chalk
    White Chalk
    White Chalk is the eighth studio album by PJ Harvey, released on 24 September 2007 in the UK, and on 2 October 2007 in the US.Work on the album started in 2006, with producer Flood and John Parish, who also worked on her To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire? albums...

    (2007)
  • Let England Shake
    Let England Shake
    Let England Shake is the tenth studio album by PJ Harvey, released on 11 February 2011 in the UK. Work on it began around the time of White Chalks release in 2007, though it is a departure from the piano-driven introspection of that album. The album was written over a period of two-and-a-half...

    (2011)


Compilation albums
  • 4-Track Demos
    4-Track Demos
    4-Track Demos is an album of demos by British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. It was released in October 1993 by Island Records. It consists of 8 demos of songs from her previous album, Rid of Me, along with 6 demos of some unreleased tracks which never made it to being recorded with the three-piece...

    (1993)
  • The Peel Sessions 1991–2004
    The Peel Sessions 1991–2004
    The Peel Sessions 1991–2004 is an album by British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey, released in 2006. It is a compilation of tracks especially recorded for broadcast on John Peel's Radio 1 programme.-Track listing:...

    (2006)


Collaborations with John Parish
  • Dance Hall at Louse Point
    Dance Hall at Louse Point
    Dance Hall at Louse Point is a 1996 album by John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey. Parish wrote and played the music, while Harvey sang vocals and wrote the lyrics...

    (1996)
  • A Woman a Man Walked By
    A Woman a Man Walked By
    A Woman A Man Walked By is an album by PJ Harvey and John Parish, released on 30 March 2009 on Island Records.-Background:It is the second collaboration between Harvey and Parish, following 1996's Dance Hall at Louse Point. The album was recorded in Bristol and Dorset, and mixed by Flood. This...

    (2009)

External links

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