Song #2.

P.J. Harvey-“Oh My Lover”-Dry
I’m not quite clear where I first heard of P.J. Harvey-I think it was a review in Spin or Rolling Stone. At any rate, the review was good enough that I bought the cassette without ever hearing a single note first-something that was quite the norm for me in the days before the internet. On this occasion I was not disappointed. I distinctly remember buying the tape at the mall Camelot Music on my lunch break from the Hallmark store where I worked. After my shift was over I hopped in my car (a beat up 1980 Chevy Citation), put the tape in and heard the opening chords of “Oh My Lover”. I remember flying down the highway hearing this song of despair and desperate longing and thinking, “This woman knows exactly how I feel.” At this time in my life I was a lonely 16 year old, who knew only one thing about love, and it could be summed up in one word-unrequited. I had endured a fair number of high school crushes at this point, none of them amounting to much except me feeling like I would NEVER have a girlfriend. So when P.J. sang, “You can love her, you can love me at the same time”, I couldn’t help but agree. After all, I’d rather have a girl who loved someone else than no girl at all, right? Of course, lacking P.J.s real world experience, what I really identified with was the overall sense of desperation and loneliness she conveys so well in this mournful dirge.
What a gutsy move making this the first song on her first album-so raw and real and open, as opposed to some of the more traditional pop/rock tunes on the rest of the album. From the slow, sludgy beginning to the desperate moan at the end, this tune builds like all scorned lover’s pleas to an unresponsive former love –calm and rational at the beginning, devolving into a frantic and maniacal wail of raw pain by the conversation’s end. I honestly can’t imagine someone capturing this emotion in a more pure form, at least until I perfect that thought-sharing helmet I’ve been working on.
I almost wish that you girls would never have to experience the kind of incurable pain P.J. expresses so eloquently in this song-but I wouldn’t want to rob you of the pleasure. Yes, it hurts with an immensity that makes you wish you were dead, your body physically aches with the sheer sadness, and you can’t imagine how you will ever make it through the next hour, much less the next day. But honestly, having your heart broken and longing for someone you can never have is one of the most pure and real emotions you will ever experience. If this does ever happen to you, my beautiful girls, there is nothing you can do about it but take it one day at a time and know that, this too, shall pass.
And that you are loved.