PJ Harvey explains why Oasis never broke any new ground: “It’s got to be risky”
While the gaps between her releases may be getting ever longer, one thing that you can always count on from a PJ Harvey album is that it will attempt to reinvent her sound and try to push things forward creatively, rather than simply settling for the same sounds she has previously explored.
There may not be a huge amount of difference between any two consecutive records in her catalogue, with debut album Dry feeling like the prototype for the follow-up, Rid Of Me, for example, but after this pairing and all subsequent ones, things have always undergone a slight revamp in an effort to develop her sound and explore new avenues.
To Bring You My Love was a dramatic step forward for Harvey artistically, and saw her incorporate both different styles and themes, and was also considered to be her breakthrough album, giving her significantly more mainstream attention when compared to her first two albums. With elements of punk and blues being fused together made for a small but necessary shift away from the raw grunge and noise rock focus of her earlier work, she’s since gone on to reinvent herself on numerous occasions.
This is exactly what it means to be an artist as far as some are concerned, and is the exact perspective that Harvey has always approached the creative process from. However, it’s also something that she questions when other artists fail to do it, and in her eyes, there’s no reason for any songwriter to not search for ways to develop on what they’ve already done.
In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone around the release of To Bring You My Love, Harvey was questioned on what she believes to be the difference between what makes music good and what makes music popular. After suggesting many things, such as the need to be “long-lasting” and “always pushing the boundaries”, she went further to try and figure out how these two things differ.
“It’s always attempting things that haven’t been attempted before or trying to provoke a reaction,” she argued. “It’s got to be stimulating. It’s got to be risky, and a lot of popular music is not that way for me. It’s very, very safe. It’s all been done before.”
She then continued by referring to one of the biggest acts of the moment, complaining that they’re not ambitious enough to test these boundaries. “Sure, Oasis is catchy,” Harvey mused, “but it’s not new ground. I’d much rather risk falling flat on my face experimenting with weird things that maybe people won’t like. What I respect in other musicians is that quality of taking what you’ve learned and moving on, moving away, going somewhere else and continuing to look.”
Of course, there’s a huge chasm between the works of Oasis and Harvey, not just in terms of popularity, but in terms of the audiences they’re trying to attract. While that’s not necessarily a criticism of the Gallagher brothers, it’s made for a completely different purpose, and aims to attract audiences by creating something that feels safe and familiar, rather than trying to challenge them with new ideas. If Oasis had attempted to do that, it’s unlikely that they would ever have been as big as they are.
