PJ Harvey - Down By the Water

"Little fish, big fish swimming in the water. Come back here man gimme my daughter."

Album: To Bring You My Love [3rd album]
Recorded: London, England
Genre: Rock, Indie Rock, Dark Cabaret, Gothic Country
Album Release: February 27th 1995
Single Release: February 2nd 1995 [lead single]
Length: 3.14
Producer: John Parish, PJ Harvey & Flood
Vocalist: PJ Harvey [age 25]
Label: Island Records

Music Video


Live on Jools Holland in 1995


Leadbelly - Salty Dog (1937)


Demo version

Charts, Streams & Sales

UK (album): Certified gold in July 2013 (over 100,000 units sold)
UK (album): #12
Spotify: 45,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 14,000,000 +
MTV Video Music Awards Nominee 1995: Best Female Video
Grammy Awards Nominee 1996: Best Female Rock Vocal Performance (losing to Alanis Morissette)
Grammy Awards Nominee 1996: Best Alternative Music Performance (losing to Nirvana)
Rolling Stone Critic's Pick for Album of the Year 1995: #1
Nominated for the 1995 Mercury prize (losing to Portishead)

Credits

Cello, drums, electronic organ, guitar, violin, viola

Details

• PJ Harvey started off singing the blues. A punky, abrasive, Captain Beefheart infused version of the blues. This album, which would be her first as a solo artist and most successful to date, generally marked a distinct shift in style away from that traditional foundation. Still, she hadn't forgot her roots. For 'Down By The Water' she would take inspiration from a folk song, Salty Dog Blues, borrowing a guitar riff and the refrain "little fish, big fish swimming in the water." Harvey would however take the song in a more sinister direction.
  
  Harvey's song is about drowning her own daughter and then returning to the crime scene and singing "come back here man gimme my daughter" in what I suppose is a twisted show of regret.
  
  The music video features PJ Harvey herself floundering in the water which could signify that it was actually a part of herself that she drowned rather than it being an actual little 'un. Harvey was childless at the time of the songs release and still is. Maybe her drowning of a yet to be born daughter is the drowning of her prospects of motherhood? Drowning the children she would never have in the amniotic fluid of the womb? Or maybe it all came to her in a fever dream on a hot night. We can only speculate as Harvey hasn't revealed the real reason.
  
  Perhaps a credible interpretation is that the song leans into the old literary link between female sexuality and drowning. A representation of women acting on sexual desire and dangerous outcomes been the inevitable result. In the music video Harvey is wearing the harlot's red as well as a devilish smile. Does this mean that she likes the sexual freedom afforded to women in the nineties? Because the teller of the tale lives and it is the child that meets a grizzly end. Notably, it is the mother doing the drowning which suggests that the drowning represents the death of woman as mother.
  

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