PJ Harvey releases ambient single “Voyager”, written for physicist Brian Cox’s stage show
British singer PJ Harvey has released her new single “Voyager”, her first new music in three years since 2023's “I Inside the Old Year Dying”. While technically a recording hiatus, 2024 saw Harvey score the Apple TV series “Bad Sisters” and compose music for the stage play “London Tide”.
“Voyager” took shape as part of work toward Harvey’s upcoming studio album: the song already existed as a voice memo when physicist Brian Cox asked her to contribute a track to his science-themed live show “Emergence”. Hearing the demo, Cox immediately thought of the Voyager spacecraft and the sound of its signal traveling back to Earth — an idea that became the song’s starting point. The title refers to NASA’s Voyager probe, launched in 1977; the lyrics are written from the perspective of Voyager 2, imagining what the spacecraft might say to humanity.
Harvey wrote and composed the track herself, handling synthesizers, vocals and percussion. The orchestral arrangement comes from Dario Marianelli, performed by The Miraval Orchestra, with Cox himself contributing synth parts. The song also pays tribute to astronomer Carl Sagan, weaving in a reference to his concept of the “pale blue dot” — the image of Earth as seen from the edge of the solar system.
