PJ Harvey and Netflix's Shameless: A lyrical analysis and intertextuality

Around Fall of 2023, I started listening to PJ Harvey for the first time in my life, and at the same time, my mom started watching Shameless on Netflix. It's not the type of show I usually watch, but I couldn't help myself from sticking around the couch and finding out whether Fiona got to keep Liam from Monica in Season 1.

I'm not the most cultured when it comes to music - I tend to stick to one singular artist or even one singular song - but I took PJ Harvey as the opportunity to finally widen my musical horizons. As I listened, feeling the relationship between her music and Shameless came naturally. In my opinion, I felt like the themes in PJ Harvey's Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea correlated with many of the themes found in Shameless.

I specifically found Horses In My Dreams to be the title that resonates with Fiona's journey.

PJ Harvey and "Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea"

As a 90s indie songwriter and instrumentalist, specializing in genres like alt rock, grunge, blues, and folk; PJ Harvey is the perfect pick for an underrated and distinctive artist. I will admit, the only reason I know of her is because of the Rory-Tristan fiasco in Gilmore Girls (by the way, apparently PJ's birthday is just one day after Rory's!) but that's not to say that I didn't listen with intention and a personal proximity to her music.

One of PJ Harvey's best-received albums is Stories From the City, Stories From The Sea released in 2000. I couldn't quite vibe with it in the beginning, but in the moments my ears were devoid of Stories, I found myself yearning for more of that grungy, urban sound.

Stories is based in New York City, where PJ Harvey was living at the time of the album's creation. Many of the songs reference its location such as the Brooklyn rooftop in You Said Something or "Chinatown" and "Little Italy" in Good Fortune. Personally, however, I thought of my hometown, Chicago, which so happens to be the setting of Shameless.

Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, may just be about a recklessly romantic PJ in the big apple, but in my head, it was about a girl who was losing herself in dangerous freedom because she was trying to escape a world of grueling hardships resulting from generational destitution. I thought of the poverty, the low-income immigrant neighborhoods, and the systemically oppressed families living in Chicago and other cities like New York.

Fiona's journey on Shameless

Shameless is a show about the Gallaghers, a large family living in the Southside of Chicago. The show walks us through their financial struggles, the conflicts they endure with their neglectful parents, participation in and dealing with crime, dealing with addiction and mental illness, and much more.

Fiona is the eldest of her whole family and just at the age of 6, she was responsible for taking care of her siblings - Lip, Ian, Debbie, Carl, and later, Liam. The situation of generational economic oppression is evident in the show, seeing as they have a drug addict and alcoholic for a father, a mother who is bipolar and unable to take care of them, and an overall tight income.

Video: Fiona gains custody over her siblings - Season 3, Episode 7

Fiona becomes the sole guardian of her siblings, having taken care of them their whole life. She worked multiple jobs at a time, cooked and fed her siblings food, did their laundry, took them to school - everything a mother would do for her children, except, she was a child too.

"Horses In My Dreams" is a reflection of Fiona Gallagher

Horses In My Dreams ended up being my favorite song of Stories.

When I was first listening to the album, my first instinct was to re-listen to songs like Beautiful Feeling and We Float because the quieter songs were more approachable to me. Horses In My Dreams was one of them. I listened to it a couple of times and searched up the lyrics, only to come across a post claiming it as one of the most beautifully written songs they've ever heard.

I agree completely.

Horses In My Dreams is a poetic piece. With just a few simple lines that PJ repeats throughout the song, it may not seem like much, but it's this simplicity and repetition that adds to its atmosphere and depth.

HORSES IN MY DREAMS

Horses in my dreams

like waves, like the sea

They pull out of here

they pull, they are free

I rode a horse around the world

along the tracks of a train

broke the record, found the gold

set myself free again

I have pulled myself clear

Horses in my dreams

like waves, like the sea

On the tracks of a train

set myself free again

I have pulled myself clear

Silent, I have pulled myself clear

Outside, I have pulled myself clear

In silence, I have pulled myself clear

Lyrical Analysis:

Horses represent freedom, independence, and courage. They are "like the waves, like the sea" because they are part of nature, separate from society, and separate from the socioeconomic problems of the world. These horses simply exist, ever flowing, and able to surge and swell freely.

They pull out of here

they pull, they are free

In these lines, "here" represents the place the narrator lives. From the perspective of Fiona, "here" is the Back Of The Yards neighborhood in Southside Chicago. These horses are a blurry light at the end of the tunnel, another similar trope in media. If you've ever seen Wild starring Reese Witherspoon, her mother's horse represented kindness, beauty, and everything she dreamed of. To Fiona, they are her goals, her longings, and they are fuzzy, bright images that appear in her vast mind in the dead of the night, just barely out of reach.

I rode a horse around the world

Along the tracks of a train

The narrator now shifts to herself. The horses are no longer just happy pictures in her dreams, they are reality. She has embodied the horse, she's exploring the world, and there's nothing to stop her. The train tracks are another symbol of freedom. A train is a ticket to independence; perhaps a high school graduate is taking the train to college or a lifelong nomad is leaving their last stop in Beijing to get to Korea. In Fiona's case, the train tracks are her path away from Chicago and the shackles of her world: financial struggles, family burdens, mental illnesses in the people she loves, etc.

broke the record, found the gold

set myself free again

Fiona has "broke the record" because she's done something nobody else in her entire family of generations has done before - she's earned money and she's not broke. In Season 9, Fiona ends up gaining $100,000, half of which she gives to her siblings and the rest she takes with her as she leaves to embark on a new journey. Not only has she helped her family, she has set herself free.

I have pulled myself clear

Silent, I have pulled myself clear

Outside, I have pulled myself clear

In silence, I have pulled myself clear

These are the most penetrating verses of the song. It's simple, but it describes everything Fiona is likely feeling as she takes her seat in an airplane and flies away. She had to pull herself out of the world she lived in. Fiona was a shackled horse. For the longest time, no matter how much she worked, she was trapped; it was like no matter how many times she pushed the snowball up the hill, it kept rolling down because that's the way systemic oppression works.

Earlier on in her life, if she were to simply leave and decide to remove her chains, her siblings would not be able to survive. Lip would not go to school, Ian would become a criminal with Mickey, and Carl, Debbie, and Liam would end up neglected - perhaps in a foster home.

However, after years of dedicating her whole life to her family, and after getting the $100,000 she originally invested, she was able to set herself free, and - she's the whole reason her family is still alive.

The most significant word I find in these verses is "silence" - because barely anyone noticed Fiona's hard work. Barely anyone recognized Fiona pulling herself out of the treachery that was her life and no one noticed her strength and resilience. Her parents never truly understood Fiona's critical role and nobody gave her a "parenting excellence" award. She did it on her own. She did it "in silence" and while nobody was watching.

Video: Fiona leaves Chicago - Season 9, Episode 14

My poem

This article is already a long read, and for that, I'm sorry (!), but I thought I would wrap up everything with a poem I wrote in January using the same themes and symbols, just with my own personal emotions and experiences.

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