#PJ Harvey #Polly Jean Harvey #alternative rock #art rock #indie rock #hard rock #art rock #punk blues #folk rock #avant-rock #lo-fi #anti-pop #singer-songwriter #1990s
A sheela-na-gig is a carving of a naked woman holding her vagina open. They are to be found carved on old churches (yes, really!) in Great Britain and Ireland. So the lyric, "He said, 'Sheela-na-gig, sheela-na-gig, you exhibitionist!'" is exceedingly graphic. "The song's a collection of different moments between lovers," Harvey told Melody Maker in 1992. "I suppose it's about being able to laugh at yourself in relationships. There's some anger there but, for me, it's a funny song. I wasn't intending it to be a feminist song or anything. I wanted it to have several sides." When asked about the significance of the carving, Harvey said: "It was just the inspiration for the song, so it isn't a song about a stone carving, but when I wrote it, what I liked about the carving was that she was laughing, and ripping herself apart. You have humour and horrificness. It's the same with horror films – are they funny or just horrific? It's something that I really want to explore." The repeated lyric, "Gonna wash that man right out of my hair," was taken from the song title "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" from the 1949 Broadway musical South Pacific. "I heard that and it had the humorous feel I wanted, so I put it in. I was trying to wash somebody out of my hair at the time, too," Harvey explained. The lyric, "Please take those dirty pillows away from me," is a reference to Stephen King's first novel, Carrie (and the 1976 film adaptation). Religious zealot Margaret White refers to her daughter's breasts as "dirty pillows." Harvey was blasted by the British press when she posed nude (with her bare back facing the camera, showing just a hint of one breast) for the cover of NME in 1992. She was accused of feeding into the notion that women couldn't get ahead in the industry without taking off their clothes and was further called irresponsible when she refused to explain herself. When asked about the controversy, she said, "That cover was saying a lot of things. In 'Sheela-Na-Gig,' the man says, 'you exhibitionist,' as if, the female can be powerful and beautiful, but you can't show it." From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/pj-harvey/sheela-na-gig
To me this is a song about the Christian perversion of sex - turning it from a natural celebration into something dirty and repulsive. Sheela Na Gig is an uninhibited pagan fertility Goddess. She is depicted as sitting spread eagle, using her hands to pull her vaginal lips apart; a welcoming enticement into carnal pleasure and the miraculous creation of life that results. It's not easy being a pagan fertility goddess in a culture of Puritan repression. It's pathetic that too many men have been taught to find such open sexuality as filthy and wrong. The song triumphantly declares she will not hide or conform - she will not let derision crush her spirit. She will boldly move on until she finds men who appreciate her. From: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/40525
I’ve been trying to show you over and over
Look at these my child-bearing hips
Look at these my ruby red ruby lips
Look at these my work strong arms and
You've got to see my bottle full of charm
I lay it all at your feet
You turn around and say back to me
He said
Sheela-na-gig, sheela-na-gig
You exhibitionist
Gonna wash that man right out of my hair
Just like the first time he said he didn't care
Gonna wash that man right out of my hair
Heard it before, no more
Gonna wash that man right out of my hair
Turn the corner another one there
Gonna wash that man right out of my hair
Heard it before
He said
Sheela-na-gig, sheela-na-gig
You exhibitionist
Put money in your idle hole
He said 'wash your breasts, I don't want to be unclean'
He said 'please take those dirty pillows away from me'
PJ Harvey, in full Polly Jean Harvey, is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist whose mythically pitched, fanatically intense recordings and concerts set new standards for women in rock. Harvey, born to countercultural parents in rural England, seems to have grown up with a sense of rock as simply another elemental force within the landscape. “Sheela-na-gig,” for instance, a single from her first album, Dry (1992), took as its central image the female exhibitionist carvings with gaping genitals found throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom, whose origins are the subject of debate. The song, like many others by Harvey, treats female sexuality as a ravaging, haunted force, but, instead of acting the victim, she theatrically embodies her obsessions, equates them with the alluring menace of rock and the blues, and builds herself into an archetype. From: https://www.britannica.com/biography/PJ-Harvey
