This page is an introduction to PJ Harvey whose music was used during the Millennium episode Nostalgia. A complete list of all music by PJ Harvey that was used throughout Millennium is also listed below.
Our Millennium Music Guide is based on detailed profiles for each artist, band or composer and their music which was used in a specific episode (sometimes more than one). Here you can learn more about the music and the people that created the music, including where available a description of the scenes in which their music can be heard.
When a dog digs up a freshly severed woman's leg, Frank Black and Emma Hollis travel to a small town, where Emma spent part of her nomadic youth, to investigate. Frank, from the start, knows fully well who the culprit is but a lack of evidence forces him to engage in a dangerous game of slowly breaking down the killer's psyche, thus forcing him to reveal his own crimes.
Main Crew
Written by Michael R. Perry
Directed by Thomas J. Wright
Edited by James Coblentz
Still images from Nostalgia
There are a total of 155 images for Nostalgia which are available in our Episode Image Gallery.
Music by PJ Harvey used in the Millennium episode Nostalgia
Polly Jean Harvey (born 9th October 1969) is a British musician and songwriter. She has recorded as a solo artist under the name PJ Harvey, but she began her career as part of a trio (with drummer Rob Ellis and bassist Steve Vaughan) also named PJ Harvey.
Where PJ Harvey can be heard in Nostalgia
The Millennium episode Nostalgia contains the following music by PJ Harvey:
A Perfect Day Elise
Heard in the opening episode teaser. A car is being driven down a rural road by a pretty young woman, Jan McCall. She's listening to music - A Perfect Day Elise, by PJ Harvey. She picks up a marijuana cigarette and lights it. She's happily driving along, smoking her cigarette and enjoying the music. Then she notices something in her rear view mirror.
PJ Harvey - additional music heard in Millennium
Millennium's producers would occasionally use additional music from the same artist, band or composer. Sometimes a track or song could be heard in more than one episode of the series.
Music from PJ Harvey was used in a total of 1 episode/s of Millennium. Below is a complete list of all music by PJ Harvey heard throughout the series and the episodes in which it was used, including links to the relevant music and episode profiles:
Harvey was born in Yeovil and brought up in nearby Corscombe (Dorset, United Kingdom). The daughter of a stonemason and a sculptor, Harvey grew up on a small sheep farm in Dorset. At an early age her parents introduced her to the blues, jazz and art-rock music which would later influence her the most strongly: "I was brought up listening to John Lee Hooker, to Howlin' Wolf, to Robert Johnson, and a lot of Jimi Hendrix and Captain Beefheart. 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," she told Rolling Stone in 1995. She also went through a brief adolescent rebellion where she listened to poppier fare like U2, The Police, Soft Cell, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, and later in her teens she became a huge fan of the seminal US indie guitar bands Pixies, Television and Slint, though not, as many critics have suspected, Patti Smith (a frequent comparison that Harvey dismisses as "lazy journalism"). More recently she has claimed inspiration from Russian folk music, Italian soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone and classical composers like Arvo Pärt, Samuel Barber and Henryk Górecki.
She studied saxophone for about eight years, and contributed sax, guitar and backing vocals to her earliest Somerset bands Bologna, the Polekats, the Stoned Weaklings and Automatic Dlamini. At the age of 18 she began writing her own songs and in January 1991 she formed the original PJ Harvey three-piece band, with herself on vocals and guitars, ex-Automatic Dlamini bandmate Rob Ellis on drums and Ian Olliver on bass (though Olliver was swiftly replaced by Steve Vaughan). The trio's debut gig - at a skittle alley in Sherborne's Antelope Hotel - was so disastrous that the proprietor begged the band to stop playing as nearly all his customers had fled the venue.
By that time Harvey had also completed a foundation art course at Yeovil Art College and was then studying sculpture at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London, still undecided as to her future career.
Early Years
Harvey released her debut single "Dress" on the independent label Too Pure in October 1991. It was voted Single of the Week in Melody Maker by guest reviewer John Peel, 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". The following spring she released an equally acclaimed second single, "Sheela Na Gig", and her first LP Dry in 1992. At that time she also released a limited edition double LP containing both Dry and the demos for Dry, called Dry Demonstration. The trio's raw, guitar-driven hard rock - which mixed elements of punk, blues and grunge - quickly won rave reviews and a strong cult following on both sides of the Atlantic, with Rolling Stone magazine naming the then-22-year-old Harvey the year's Best Songwriter and Best New Female Singer.
She drew fire in April 1992 when she appeared topless on the cover of the British magazine New Musical Express; until then she had been assumed to be unambiguously feminist. Harvey quickly avoided being adopted as a feminist spokesperson, telling Vox magazine that "I wouldn't call myself a feminist because I don't understand the term or the baggage it takes along with it. I'd feel like I really have to go back and study its history to associate myself with it, and I don't feel the need to do that. I'd much rather just get on and do things the way I have been doing them," adding that "I think I'd find it quite patronising to be called a Riot Grrrl if I was one of them, but they obviously don't think so." More recently she told Bust magazine: "I don't ever think about [feminism]. I mean, it doesn't cross my mind. I certainly don't think in terms of gender when I'm writing songs, and I never had any problems as the result of being female that I couldn't get over. Maybe I'm not thankful for the things that have gone before me, you know. But I don't see that there's any need to be aware of being a woman in this business. It just seems a waste of time." She added, "I don't offer [support] specifically to women; I offer it to people who write music. That's a lot of men."
Harvey then signed to Island Records amid a major-label bidding war. 1993 saw the release of two further albums in quick succession, the noisy, intense and fiercely uncompromising Rid of Me (engineered by Steve Albini at Pachyderm Recording Studio) with the original trio and, later in the year, a solo release 4-Track Demos, which contained eight of the homemade 4-track demos that would become Rid of Me alongside six previously unreleased tracks.
Solo Works
After the departure of Ellis and Vaughan in August 1993, Harvey embarked on a solo career exploring collaborations with other musicians. To Bring You My Love (1995) was produced by Mark Ellis and quickly became a staple of alternative rock. To Bring You My Love was a worldwide success, selling over one million copies, according to BPI. A more bluesy record than its predecessors, it saw Harvey broadening her sonic palette to include strings, organ and synthesizers. It also generated a surprise modern-rock radio hit with the single "Down by the Water". The album received a glowing critical response and ended up being voted Album of the Year by The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, USA Today, People, New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Harvey was also voted Artist of the Year by Rolling Stone and Spin magazine. Her album was ranked third in Spin's Top 90 Albums of the 90's, behind Nirvana and Public Enemy.
Around this time, Harvey began experimenting with her image and adopting an elaborate, theatrical, almost cabaret edge to her live shows. Where she once performed onstage in simple black leggings, turtleneck sweaters and Doc Martens, with no make-up and her hair scraped into a bun, she now began performing in ballgowns, pink catsuits, wigs and garish, vampish 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, Kabuki or performance art on her new image (a look she affectionately dubbed "Joan Crawford on acid") but admitted to Spin magazine, "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 haunting theme song from Philip Ridley's adult fairy-tale, The Passion Of Darkly Noon (released in 1996), using a softer, almost angelic, vocal range that surprised many people.
In 1998 she released Is This Desire?, a challenging and experimental record that met a mixed critical reception but which Harvey herself cites as her personal favourite; it saw her temporarily leaving the guitars behind and focusing on building dark, studio-based mood pieces around electronics, keyboards, piano and bass. She reunited with her old bandmate Rob Ellis and multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey (no relation) for her 2000 album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. Written in Dorset, Paris and New York, the album was a critical and commercial success, selling over a million copies worldwide and taking the Mercury Music Prize in the following year. It mixed uncharacteristically lush, melodic pop-rock sounds with the gritty, thrashing, guitar-driven punk energy of her earlier records, and also seemed to signify a change in mood for Polly as she sang about a seemingly new-found happiness in her life. Radiohead singer Thom Yorke 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 of the 100 Greatest Women in Rock Music. Her latest album, Uh Huh Her, was released May 31, 2004. For the first time since 4-Track Demos, Harvey produced it alone and played every instrument bar the drums. The album, which was a sparser, more intimate, lo-fi and low-key affair than its predecessor, met with a generally positive response from critics and fans. 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."
Accolades she has received for her work include the 2001 Mercury Music Prize, six Brit award nominations, five Grammy nominations and two further Mercury Music Prize nominations. In a recent issue, Hot Press magazine praised her for crafting "some of the most erotic, powerful and positive love songs ever written".
In 2004, Diplo extensively sampled "Down by the Water" for his remix of "Still Tippin', the breakout single of Houston rapper Mike Jones (also featuring Slim Thug and Paul Wall). Diplo used the sample again in 2006 in "Now I Hollar" by the indie hip-hop group Plastic Little, a track featuring Spank Rock and included on the album She's Mature.
In May 2006 Harvey played her first UK gig of the year, revealing that her new album would be almost entirely piano based. New songs taken from the as-yet-untitled forthcoming album include 'When Under Ether' (formerly known as The Ceiling), 'The Mountain' and 'Bitter Little Bird'. Later in 2006 she released her first concert DVD "Please Leave Quietly" which contained songs from her entire career as well as behind the scene video clips between performances. On October 23 2006 she released The Peel Sessions 1991-2004.
In November 2006 she started to work on her eighth studio album with Flood, John Parish and Eric Drew Feldman.
Song 1: A Perfect Day Elise
Album Title: Is This Desire? (CD 1998)
Scene: A Perfect Day Elise can be heard during the following scenes in the Millennium episode Nostalgia:
Heard in the opening episode teaser. A car is being driven down a rural road by a pretty young woman, Jan McCall. She's listening to music - A Perfect Day Elise, by PJ Harvey. She picks up a marijuana cigarette and lights it. She's happily driving along, smoking her cigarette and enjoying the music. Then she notices something in her rear view mirror.
Listen to A Perfect Day Elise
The following video clip relates to A Perfect Day Elise by PJ Harvey:
This video content is hosted by third party website Youtube. With grateful thanks to the contributor. Please note we have no control over any embedded video advertising.
Lyrics for A Perfect Day Elise:
The following lyrics are the property of the respective authors, artists and labels. The lyrics to A Perfect Day Elise are provided for educational and research purposes only. Please support PJ Harvey by purchasing relevant CD's or legal music downloads.
He got lucky, got lucky one time
Hitting with the girl in room five none nine
She turned her back on him facing the frame
Said, "Listen Joe don't you come here again"
White sun scattered all over the sea
He could think of nothing but her name Elise
God is the sweat running down his back
The water soaked her blonde hair black
It's a perfect day
A perfect day, Elise
He got burned by the sun
He's a lucky man
His face so pale and his hands so worn
And the sky
Let himself in room five none nine
As she turned away
Said a prayer, pulled the trigger and cried
Tell me why
Sorry, we do not currently have any other stored websites for PJ Harvey. If you are aware of a quality website for this artist, please contact us and we'll add it to this page.
