PJ Harvey was working on his new album and a new book, like ‘I Inside The Old Year Dying’ (2023), when another project crossed his path. Specifically, British physicist Brian Cox asked him for a song for his ‘Emergence’ tour.
The resulting song is called ‘Voyager’, in homage to Carl Sagan’s “Voyager 1” space probe that was sent into space in 1977 to explain planet Earth to any intelligent extraterrestrial life forms that might intercept it.
The author of such famous albums as ‘Rid of Me’, ‘Let England Shake’ and ‘Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea’, explains her new project: «I have always been fascinated by spaceships and their travels, and what would they tell us if they could talk. “This was the starting point to develop the song.”
He continues: “The song had already come to life as part of my new album project when Brian Cox invited me to write a piece for his new show. I sent him the song as an audio to see if it said anything to him. “I immediately thought of the sound of Voyager’s signal returning to Earth and with these ideas I let the song develop and made the orchestral arrangement with Dario Marianelli.”
Professor Brian Cox is credited on synthesizer, as is PJ Harvey herself on this instrument and on percussion. Between calls such as “listen to my signal, will you follow it?”, the “pale blue dot” appears in the lyrics as a tribute to Carl Sagan’s book of the same name, specifically in the stanza:
«Voyager, look back
At a pale-blue dot
All we don’t know
“A flake of snow”
