This Mess We're In

stories from the city, stories from the sea

PJ Harvey wrote it for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, a record made largely about New York, and it is the quietest thing on it, two people in a hotel room with the city outside and everything already over. She and Thom Yorke had written to each other a few times but never met. She wrote it with him in mind, sent it to him and asked if he would sing it; had he said no, she would have sung it herself. He shares the lead vocal.

Yorke was in the studio, at Linford Manor in Milton Keynes that spring, for only a couple of days, and also sings backing vocals on “One Line” and “Beautiful Feeling” and plays keyboards on “One Line”. Harvey said later that very few living voices move her, and his is one.

Thom can sing the most mundane word, and make it absolutely heartbreaking.

pj harvey · amazon.co.uk, june 2004

the mercury

The album won the Mercury Music Prize in London on the evening of 11 September 2001, ahead of Amnesiac, which was on the same shortlist of 12. Harvey was stranded in Washington by the attacks that day and spoke to the ceremony by telephone. Radiohead spent the night on stage in Berlin.

the duet he declined

Not everyone who asked Yorke for a duet got a yes. In 2007 Paul McCartney said he had asked Yorke for a duet and been told no, because Yorke only felt happy working on his own and Radiohead's material.