Songs Like Down by the Water by PJ Harvey
By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-09-08
Intensity 84, dynamic range 9, 95 BPM, complex texture, dynamic vocals, frequent sudden changes. That is Down by the Water — and it turns out to be an unusually busy address. Tagged heavy and melancholy.
Identical on all three numbers
Freak on a Leash by Korn reads intensity 84, dynamic range 9, 95 BPM — the same three figures, with the same frequent shifts, sharing the heavy tag. A 1995 art-rock single and a 1998 nu-metal one, indistinguishable to our columns.
The other 84s
- Fake Love — BTS. Dynamic range 9, 90 BPM. K-pop at the same measured weight.
- Manic Depression — Jimi Hendrix. Dynamic range 8, 140 BPM — the fastest here by a distance.
- Blackwater Park — Opeth. Dynamic range 9, 90 BPM, sharing melancholy.
- Descending — Tool. Dynamic range 9, 90 BPM, also melancholy.
And one that shares both tags from a very different world
It’s All Coming Back to Me Now by Celine Dion measures intensity 83, dynamic range 9, 82 BPM, with frequent sudden changes — and carries heavy and melancholy, exactly like the seed. A power ballad built to the same specification as a PJ Harvey single: enormous range, restless movement, a voice under real strain.
Five of the six records above sit at a dynamic range of 9. This is not a band for background listening; everything here travels a very long way between its quietest and loudest points.
Down by the Water appears on PJ Harvey’s 1995 album To Bring You My Love. Figures are our own measurements, read from the public API at build time. The genre and era spread is a consequence of measuring sound rather than style — it is not a claim that these artists resemble each other in any other way. No lyrics are reproduced.