Polly Jean Harvey was born on 9 October 1969 and is an English singer, songwriter, and musician.
49 Facts About PJ Harvey
2.
PJ Harvey began her career in 1988 when she joined local band Automatic Dlamini as a vocalist, guitarist and saxophonist.
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The trio released two studio albums called Dry and Rid of Me before disbanding, after which PJ Harvey continued as a solo artist.
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PJ Harvey has garnered eight Brit Award nominations, seven Grammy Award nominations and two further Mercury Prize nominations.
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Polly Jean PJ Harvey was born on 9 October 1969 in Bridport, Dorset, the second child of Ray and Eva PJ Harvey.
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PJ Harvey's parents owned a quarrying business on Ham Hill, the site of a large Iron Age hillfort, and she grew up on the family farm in Corscombe.
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PJ Harvey's parents introduced her to music that would later influence her work, including blues, Captain Beefheart and Bob Dylan.
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PJ Harvey's parents were avid music fans and regularly arranged get-togethers and small gigs, counting Ian Stewart among their oldest friends.
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PJ Harvey was a guitarist with folk duo the Polekats, with whom she wrote some of her earliest material.
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In July 1988, PJ Harvey became a member of Automatic Dlamini, a band based in Bristol with whom she gained extensive ensemble-playing experience.
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PJ Harvey had met Parish in 1987 through mutual friend Jeremy Hogg, the band's slide guitarist.
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In January 1991, PJ Harvey left to form her own band with former bandmates Ellis and Oliver, though she had formed lasting personal and professional relationships with other members, especially Parish, to whom she has referred as her "musical soulmate".
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Harvey decided to name her new band the PJ Harvey Trio, rejecting other names as "nothing felt right at all or just suggested the wrong type of sound", and to allow her to continue music as a solo artist.
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Simultaneously a more blues-influenced and more futuristic record than its predecessors, To Bring You My Love showcased PJ Harvey broadening her musical style to include strings, organs and synthesisers.
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In 1996, PJ Harvey received her first Grammy Award nominations for Best Alternative Music and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.
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In 1996, following the international success of To Bring You My Love and other collaborations, PJ Harvey began composing material that would end up on her fourth studio album, during what she referred to as "an incredibly low patch".
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In early 2000, PJ Harvey began work on her fifth studio album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea with Rob Ellis and Mick PJ Harvey.
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However, most notably, PJ Harvey was nominated for, and won, the 2001 Mercury Music Prize.
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PJ Harvey did an extensive world tour in promotion of the album, lasting seven months in total.
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On 3 August 2013, PJ Harvey released a song Shaker Aamer in support of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp detainee by the same name who was the last British citizen to be held there.
21.
On 16 January 2015, PJ Harvey began recording her ninth studio album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, in front of a live audience.
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On 18 December 2015, PJ Harvey released a 20-second teaser for the album, which contained a release date of spring 2016.
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PJ Harvey spent much of 2016 and 2017 touring the world with her nine-piece band, playing mainly on saxophone and taking her critically lauded live show around North America, South America, Europe and Australasia.
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PJ Harvey remained active since then, frequently releasing folk songs for soundtracks to popular TV Series and films.
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In June 2022, PJ Harvey stated that her next studio album was scheduled to be released in summer 2023.
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Besides her own work, PJ Harvey has collaborated with a number of other artists.
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PJ Harvey contributed the song "Slow-Motion Movie-Star", an outtake from Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, to Mick PJ Harvey's fourth studio album, Two of Diamonds, released in 2007.
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PJ Harvey has recorded two studio albums with long-time collaborator John Parish.
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PJ Harvey collaborated with Egyptian artist Ramy Essam on "The Camp", a charity single released in June 2017 to benefit displaced children in the Lebanese Bekaa Valley fleeing the Syrian Civil War.
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In November 2011, PJ Harvey composed part of the score for Young Vic's long-running production of Hamlet in London.
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PJ Harvey subsequently worked with Rickson a number of times, contributing music for his stage production of Electra, The Nest, and The Goat.
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In 2019, PJ Harvey scored Ivo van Hove's West End production of All About Eve.
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PJ Harvey documented her artistic process for writing scores in an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme 'Behind the Scenes' hosted by journalist John Wilson.
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In 2014, a number of PJ Harvey's songs were featured in the second season of Peaky Blinders.
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In 2019, PJ Harvey composed the score for Shane Meadows' miniseries, The Virtues, broadcast on Channel 4.
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In 2022, PJ Harvey composed the score for Sharon Horgan, Dave Finkel, and Brett Baer's Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters.
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PJ Harvey dislikes repeating herself in her music, resulting in very different-sounding albums.
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Around the time of To Bring You My Love, for example, PJ Harvey began experimenting with her image and adopting a theatrical aspect to her live performances.
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PJ Harvey began using stage props like a Ziggy Stardust-style flashlight microphone.
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PJ Harvey has named Bob Dylan, and Neil Young, when talking about her influences.
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However, recently PJ Harvey has said that Smith is "so energising to see and so passionate with what she's doing".
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PJ Harvey has drawn inspiration from Russian folk music, Italian soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone, classical composers like Arvo Part, Erik Satie, Samuel Barber, and Henryk Gorecki.
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Outside her better-known music career, PJ Harvey is an occasional artist and actress.
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PJ Harvey collaborated with Miles on another film, Amaeru Fallout 1972, which includes PJ Harvey performing a cover of "When Will I See You Again".
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PJ Harvey is an accomplished sculptor who has had several pieces exhibited at the Lamont Gallery and the Bridport Arts Centre.
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In December 2013, PJ Harvey gave her debut public poetry reading at the British Library.
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In October 2015, PJ Harvey published her first collection of poetry, a collaboration with photographer Seamus Murphy, entitled The Hollow of The Hand.
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PJ Harvey has one older brother, Saul, and four nephews through him.
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PJ Harvey was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to music.