1993Released
4:28

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Rid Of Me. By Songfacts®.

The title track of PJ Harvey's sophomore album is a bitter slice of rage that shocked listeners with its raw energy. The singer alternates between quietly begging her unfaithful lover to stay and threatening to twist his head off. "When I wrote 'Rid of Me,' I shocked myself," Harvey explained to Spin magazine. "I thought, 'Well, if I'm shocked, other people might be shocked.' The sound of the words was powerful, and the rhythm felt clean and simple to roll off the tongue. I knew that this was the type of song I was trying to write."

At the time, PJ Harvey was still a trio that included Polly Jean Harvey on guitar and vocals, Rob Ellis on drums, and Steve Vaughan on bass. In the middle of winter, the group moved to a remote house in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, near Pachyderm Studio, where they recorded the album under guidance of producer Steve Albini. Says Harvey: "I knew I wanted to work with Steve Albini from listening to Pixies records, and hearing the sounds he was getting, which were unlike any other sounds that I'd heard on vinyl. I really wanted that very bare, very real sound. I knew that it would suit the songs. It's like touching real objects or feeling the grain of wood. That's what his sound is like to me. It's very tangible. You can almost feel the room."

Harvey, still exhausted from a grueling tour and trying to get over a recent breakup, began writing the song during a miserable stay in a shared flat in Tottenham, London. She recalled: "We were living in a very damp flat with gas heaters, and I had a poky little room at the front of the house. In order to access any of the rest of the house you had to walk through my room. We were on the lower floor, so the people up above us would make noise. I remember starting to write the song 'Rid of Me,' sitting on my bed in my damp front room by the gas heater." For the sake of her mental health, Harvey retreated to a seaside apartment above a restaurant on Dorset's Jurassic Coast, where she continued to work on songs while taking in the beautiful scenery. "I think the view from your window when you're writing really does inform what you're writing about quite a lot. I need to stare out of a window whilst I'm writing. That helps me find where I'm going. I was by the harbor, so I could see people coming and going in boats, and I could look out at the sea. There was a fun fair that would pitch up in a field to the right of the restaurant every June, so for a while, I had a fun fair outside my window. I'm sure that contributed in some way to Rid of Me."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Rid Of Me.
AKey
MinorMode
4/4Time Signature
125BPM

Album

The album Rid Of Me is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Rid Of Me.
Universal-Island Records Ltd.
© 1993 Island Records, a division of Universal Music Operations Limited
℗ 1993 Island Records, a division of Universal Music Operations Limited

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5.8MArtists
73.6MSongs
12.3MAlbums
6.3KGenres
2.5MLabels
493KPlaylists