![\"PJ](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/PJ-Harvey-Glastonbury-1995-Seamus-Murphy-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Seamus Murphy \/ Galway FIlm)<\/p>\n
Wed 24 September 2025 21:30, UK <\/p>\n
There are certain artists who are impossible to ignore, no matter what. They loom so large that their impact touches seemingly every musician ever since, even one\u2019s worlds away from their music. Even ones as singular as PJ Harvey.<\/a><\/p>\n PJ Harvey\u2019s musical world often feels entirely her own. She\u2019s a reference that many people use for their music, but her own aural landscape often feels reference-less, pulling instead from literature, history and folklore rather than from other artists.\u00a0It\u2019s also a musical world that changes a lot. How can there be references when in one moment, she is a punk, but in the next, she\u2019s a wistful and weird folk singer? Surely no inspiration could keep up.<\/p>\n Even if they could, no one would ever think that inspiration would be Elvis Presley. <\/p>\n PJ and Presley, is there even a singular tie between the two? It\u2019s tough to think of even one thing that really bridges the gap between these two disparate worlds. Presley was \u2018The King\u2019. He dominated the radio and packed crowds with screaming girls passing out over his shaking hips. He was the leader of rock and roll as he took the sound of blues and made it more vanilla, adapting it for the radio to allow it to break into the mainstream.<\/a><\/p>\n Meanwhile, Harvey couldn\u2019t care less about that. When writing a song like \u2018Let England Shake\u2019, confronting her country\u2019s violent past and developing it into an entire album all about injustice and warfare<\/a>, she\u2019s clearly not thinking about hit-making, chart domination, radio play or screaming crowds. When writing a song like \u2018Rid of Me\u2019 with its swelling and shrinking take on seduction, she\u2019s not thinking about pleasing the masses.<\/p>\n But, as I said before, there are some artists who are impossible to escape, and Elvis is one of them.<\/p>\n \u201cI was fascinated with Elvis as a child. There are so many layers there,\u201d she said, considering his legacy by stating to The New Yorker<\/a>, \u201cI think his voice is otherworldly. It has a soulfulness that I find very, very moving. And his beauty, his exquisite beauty. That voice, that beauty, it feels like such a gift to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n