4. PJ HarveyTo Bring You My Love
The tour for To Bring You My Love in 1995 was the first tour I played with Polly, and it was the first song we opened with on the very first show we played. It would have also been the last song in the set on the last tour we did in 2017, so it was actually the first song I ever played live with Polly and the last song I played live with Polly… I hadn’t actually realised that until this moment!Â
It’s been in the set of pretty much every show I’ve done with her. Usually you find when you’re touring songs that come and go, they reach a peak and another song takes over as the high point in the set, but that song has been consistently great from the first time we played it to the last. It’s a really simple song built around this repetitive riff. The lyric is quite traditional but the way Polly delivers it has this power and dynamic. She’s been able to continue to deliver it with the same degree of conviction over all that time, and that to me makes it an utterly classic song. Very few songs could stand that much repetition. It still moves me after so many years.Â
