“Love is forever, people are not,” the Australian songwriter and producer tells Rolling Stone
PJ Harding released his new single “A Dangerous Thing” on Thursday, a heartfelt ode to the risks we take for love. In support of the single, the Australian singer-songwriter shared an accompanying black-and-white video capturing intimate moments between partners and surreal scenes of people happily falling in love.
The song, released with Records/RCA Records, is the second solo release coming from PJ’s upcoming album To Fall Asleep, out June 16.
“If I had to sum up the song in one little sentence I’d probably say something like… Love is forever, people are not,” PJ tells Rolling Stone. “That puts it maybe a little more bluntly than the song does but it’s mostly accurate I think. That we choose to love in spite of this simple fact is kind of miraculous and really what the song is about.”
Speaking on the single, PJ adds in a statement: “I was raised around grief in the same way I was raised around music and those two forces I think have shaped me more than anything else in my life. A “Dangerous Thing” is about the grief on the other side of love. It’s a hard thing to spend time thinking about let alone writing songs about but I feel like there are lessons in those dark places that have given me so much in my life. It was the last song written for the EP and I feel like it’s a great introduction to the themes of the whole record.”
In November, Noah Cyrus and PJ delivered “Snow in LA,” playing off the traditional sounds of a Christmas carol while delivering a message on climate change and “the lies grown-ups tell.”
The track, written by Cyrus and Harding (who also produced the song), portrays a somber warning hidden under a slow guitar and heavy bells. “‘Snow in LA’ is a dark Christmas song for what feels like a pretty dark time,” the duo said at the time. “It’s reminiscent of traditional Christmas carols (with all their reverence and hope) but contrasted by images of catastrophic climate change and looming fascism that represent so many of our fears for the future.”
PJ also co-wrote “July” with Cyrus, garnering over one billion streams and a 4-time Platinum certification. In 2021, they released the collaborative EP People Don’t Change, which included key singles such as “Dear August” and “The Worst Of You.”
