‘The Words That Maketh Murder’: The PJ Harvey song that makes Patti Smith happy to be alive
The scope of emotional range which can be covered in music helps keep the art form one of the most precious in the world.
“In [many] years of teaching college students, I couldn’t help but notice that for many of them, popular songs held a special meaning, as they did to me when I was their age…” wrote sociologist Thomas J Scheff in his book What’s Love Got to Do With It?: Emotions and Relationships in Popular Songs.
He continued, “Popular love lyrics present a picture of an imagined social-emotional world, and modern societies tend to ignore this world. Since modern societies are highly individualistic, the nature of relationships usually takes a backseat. Modern societies focus on the self-reliant individual.”
In other words, a lot of our lives we spend locked inside our own heads. Even if we have people that we frequently talk to, the feelings that we experience throughout our lives are experienced internally, and as a result, even at the best of times, the world can be quite a lonely place. When we engage with music, we have those internal feelings acknowledged.
When Scheff spoke about music’s ability to recognise our complicated emotions as individuals, he focused predominantly on love, but that’s not the be-all and end-all. This rule applies to every emotion under the sun, as there are songs which talk about every feeling you could ever come into contact with. Whether you’re in love, you’re angry at someone, you’re happy, sad, or whatever else falls within the Venn diagram of the human psyche, you can bet that there will be a song which perfectly personifies that feeling.
Patti Smith is no stranger to the power that music possesses when it comes to acknowledging emotions. Whether it’s what she has listened to or what she has written, Smith has constantly found herself being moved and moving others through this universal art form. Flicking through her discography, you will hear Smith’s influences in a range of different songs, and they resonate on a deep emotional level every time.
Take the track ‘Elegie’ for instance, which includes a line about missing your friends who are no longer here, which Smith aptly took from a friend who is no longer here. While she’s not one to use other people’s lyrics, Smith thought it was appropriate to use a line from Jimi Hendrix, who had passed away when she was putting the song together. “The last lines,” she explained. “’I think it’s sad, just too bad, that all our friends can’t be with us today’ – are borrowed from ‘1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)’. I didn’t think Jimi would mind!”
Of course, Smith doesn’t just use music to reflect on negativity. A testament to the artistic medium means that regardless of whether listeners want to feel happy or sad, there are songs out there which apply. While she might turn to that Hendrix track to reflect on what has passed, it’s a PJ Harvey song which allows her to be grateful for what she has, specifically, the song ‘The Words That Maketh Murder’.
“What a great song,” said Smith, “It just makes me happy to exist. Whenever anyone does something of worth, including myself, it just makes me happy to be alive. So I listened to that song all morning, totally happy.”
