ABSTRACT
Talent, tragedy and glitz; self-destruction and martyrdom, a sense of entitlement and excess, the spoilt and the divine. These are some of the attributes of a diva. Elton John, Judy Garland, Rufus Wainwright, Courtney Love – martyrs and divas all, according to Alexander Doty’s (2008) collection of essays on the subject. Existing on all points of the popular cultural compass – pop, musical, grunge – they are linked by the public expression and performance of tragedy and excess. PJ Harvey, in contrast, seems too small to be a diva; her personal life has mostly been hidden behind her status as a serious recording artist. Tragedy sniffed at her once in the mid-1990s when there was a brief affair with Nick Cave, but not much is known of her private life and now attention is on her intellectual and creative abilities. She does not garner space in the gossip magazines, nor does she tweet. But I am haunted by Burns and Lafrance’s inclusion of her in their 2002 work Disruptive Divas, where she appeared alongside Tori Amos, Courtney Love and Me’Shell Ndedeocello, the first two, especially Love, garnering column inches for excessive behaviour, usually frowned upon.
