50ft Queenie

I've always taken the gender bending here not to be as simple as her having a huge cock, but a transferrance of the kind of language with which the anxious male appendage is validated through (size, mainly, but also fertility). My reason for this thinking is the term queenie, which is the name given to the queen scallop in the British Isles ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_scallop ). Clams and fannies have certainly enough in common for an extended metaphor. Fannies in the British sense, of course.

Anyway, yeah, I think to take this as her having a huge cock sort of misses the point that she is comically appropriating the exaggerated language men have used for their tackle to make a stronger point that she feels her ladyparts are no less strong and formidable: that they aren't a nothing to the man's something. And I think this because of bivalve molluscs. And also because it's funny to think of a 50ft fanny. Feel free to disagree!

Kyomara, I definitely think the gender bending means something, but not like she's a closet tranny or anything (not saying that's what you were implying). I just htink she is trying to break down gender barriers. With her great big cock. :D

I find it completely unforgivable that PJ isn't touted as one of the most impotant artists of her genre (whatever pigeonhole you'd like to shove her in). She is, of course, and I fully believe that it's because she doesn't have a great big cock. If a man had written these very same songs, he'd be hailed as a god.

I can't believe that this song has been posted for over 5 years and I'm only the 4th to comment on it. And perusing the rest of her songs, no song has more than 19 comments....

People are intimidated by her, I think.

maybe she's using a cock as a metaphor or symbol for ego. maybe this song is just about having a huge arse ego whether male of female.

i can't believe no one has commented on this song. it is great. i love it

I completely agree, my artsy slutty comrade. And when they're not intimidated by her, they don't feel she's of any relevance she's not featured on TRL or somesuch.

I once attempted to introduce one of my younger cousins to PJ, only to within a couple minutes get a wince, "this is weird", and her attempt to then convert me to worship of the alleged greatness that is Creed. She's now dead to me.

Seriously though, all hail Ms Harvey.

i love the line ... " you bend over Cassanova" did anyone else get a chuckle out of this one? she says "no sweat, im clean, nothing can touch me" gay sex was/is associated with AIDS. is she making referance?

I love this song to death (thus my name on here) It screams "I am who I am and I am the shit... no matter what!" A song of pride. The main character in the song is every gender. ha.
i like that too : ))

PJ is just... a goddess. nothing more to it

I love that with every verse the claims get wilder and more extreme - "I'm twenty inches long... no, make that thirty... forty and still rising!!!" etc.

To me she was a female Kurt Cobain at the time. She proved eventually that she was way beyond that. To me the song is simple, its a dude bragging about his manhood and she is aping that. Her first 2 albums are directed at men being egoist dickheads who think with there mansize, women are just objects and harvest alot of pain trying to weed through them.

My take on the song is that this is Polly using male type sex trash talk to point out just how funny it is. The claim is that Polly is not only as good as the boys but better, and always will be. In terms of the lyric, better equals larger, hence the "arms" race twenty, thirty, forty - no fifty inches long!

At the time I remember the song getting some air play and being a little shocked that she got away with bend over Cassanova... I can only assume the male sensors were oblivious.

What I don't see addressed here - and it's the part I really don't know... Who or what is a Queenie and does extreme size matter to a queenie?

Like many early PJ Harvey songs, this one appears to be about a great big cock. Perhaps the gender-bending details actually mean something, or perhaps they're just there to make the song interesting.