Who is PJ Harding, you might ask? Hailing from Sydney, Australia, PJ Harding, songwriter and producer, has made a name for himself collaborating with Noah Cyrus and exploring his own musical identity. We sat down with Harding to discuss musical inspirations, his collaborations, his upcoming EP, and more.
BTS: Who are you listening to right now? Who are your musical inspirations?
PJ Harding: I’ve been listening to a bunch of music recently, mostly pretty old stuff. I’ve been digging into some of the early Dolly Parton records and I’ve been listening to a lot of Smog and Bill Callahan’s solo records.
In terms of more broad musical inspiration, it’s kind of varied. There are people like Leonard Cohen and Dylan whose work has been a massive influence on my own, but also artists like Bill Whithers, Jeff Buckley, Fiona Apple, Elliott Smith, The Beatles… it’s a very long list that I won’t get very far through here.
BTS: What are your songs inspired by?
Mostly they’re inspired by the quiet, haunted thoughts I have in the very early hours of the morning.
BTS: You just released ‘A Dangerous Thing’, can you tell us about the inspiration and process for writing that?
PJ Harding: Sure. That song is really about grief and love and the strange relationship between those two forces. I was raised around a lot of grief and I think it has shaped me in some important, maybe atypical ways. I
t’s hard for me to think about the people I love without immediately thinking of losing them someday, and I would call this a blessing of sorts. A mixed blessing at least. Anyway, that’s more or less where the song comes from.
It was actually the last song written for the EP. I kind of needed something that would tie the record together and this song felt like a really accessible way to get into to some of the darker themes on the EP.
BTS: What’s your favorite track on the EP so far?
PJ Harding: That’s a hard question. ‘It Wasn’t Enough’ is a really special song and might be one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. But ’To Fall Asleep’ is probably the most personal of the songs to me, so maybe it takes that spot.
BTS: With your debut EP release, what’s the recording process like? Do you write lyrics or music first?
PH: With the exception of “The Way It Felt To Love You” all of these songs were written during covid lockdowns. “The Way It Felt To Love You” was a song I co-wrote with two other writers just before all the madness so it was very much a ‘sit in the room and work it out’ process.
The rest of the songs were just me wandering around the house singing lines to myself till the songs sort of appear. The only other slightly different one was Jesus, where I kind of had the concept and knew the song I wanted to write before I had a single lyric or melody so I just had to sit down and grind it out.
In terms of the recording process, all the songs are effectively just the demos. They’re almost all the initial recordings of the songs that I made just after writing them. They were all recorded in a bedroom.
BTS: Tell us about your collaboration with Noah Cyrus! Was that collaboration process different than writing your own music?
PJ Harding: I started working with Noah in 2019 when we got put together at a songwriting camp and we wrote July, which turned into a big song for her. It was such a great writing experience so we did it a bunch more and became friends and eventually put out a record together.
Collaborating in music is a really weird thing and I feel like there’s a kind of magic when it works and its very hard to predict but we definitely have something together and i’m incredibly grateful for it! Co-writing is definitely a different experience to writing solo although I will say I feel like writing with Noah almost feels the most like writing on my own because we’re so in sync now.
BTS: If our readers had to know one thing about you, what would it be?
My favorite ninja turtle is Donatello because of course he is.
BTS: How can our readers find you online?
PJ Harding: Im @pjhardingmusic on Instagram and Twitter and whatnot. There’s also pjharding.com where you can find info about my releases and shows and stuff.
BTS: What’s next for PJ Harding in 2023?
PJ Harding: I’m going to play some live shows with Noah next month when she comes to Australia which is exciting, but apart from that ill just be continuing to write music both for other artists and myself!
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